Farscape Epic RPG: Save Our Shrike
by Chant99
Summary: Based on my RPG. Chiana & Berret's relationship moves to the next level. Before he could tell the Nebari how he feels about her, he's kidnapped by gangsters. Leaving Chiana & the rest of the crew to find and rescue him before its too late.
1. Foreword

THE FARSCAPE EPIC RPG UNIVERSE: NEW CHARACTERS & SETTING.  
  
Author's Note: This story was written based on the characters from my Farscape RPG group. I though I'd try posting it here to see what others thought. But first I need to explain a bit about our RPG so you can follow the extra characters.  
The name of the group is "Farscape Epic RPG" and it can be found on Yahoo groups for those who wish to look us up. The game is based in an alternate Farscape universe that diverges from the shows timeline somewhere after Talyn's birth but before the Chiana/D'argo relationship.  
The Berret character here is basically the same Shrike 457 character from the "Fallen Angel" series posted here at Fanfiction.net. Though the original meeting between Chiana and the Shrike took place in a different way in the game.  
The other new characters in this story are original player characters.  
  
Andar Murdough - is a Sebacean teacher from a forgotten and lost colony. Andar's people have lost so much knowledge over the cycles that space flight is considered science fiction. Andar is abducted by aliens who experiment on his brain trying to increase intelligence. The project works much better then they thought and Andar steals a shuttle and eventually finds his way to Moya. Andar becomes a sponge for any sort of knowledge and begins to go through Moya's data banks learning everything he can. He often sees machines or gadgets in his mind and will disappear for days into his workshop to build them.  
  
Malika Phatan - is a 125-year-old Delvian teenager. After spending a number of cycles as a Peacekeeper slave aboard a command carrier, she and her mother escape in a Prowler, but at the cost of the life of a young PK officer who fell in love and secretly married Malika. After a time of running and hiding, the pair run into a Syndicate Shrike and the meeting leaves young Malika with an intense hatred and distrust for the Enforcers when the assassin kills a client Malika took a job bodyguarding for, and almost kills her and her mother in the process. Sometime after that, Malika's mother is tragically killed, leaving the girl alone. She hears a story about an escaped Leviathan with a Delvian Pa'u aboard and sets out to find the living ship with the hopes of fulfilling her mother's dream of her becoming a Pa'u. She finds Moya and Zhaan (who is alive in our game) and the older Delvian agrees to take her in. However, now there is a Shrike aboard Moya as Chiana's companion and she is having a hard time controlling the tendencies for violence she developed during the hard life she lived on the run from the Peacekeepers. Through young, Malika is also a skilled healer and thanks to her parents, an educated student of exobiology. She sets up a small lab on one of Moya's lower tiers, mostly to hide out from having to be around Berret ... and possibly Andar. Both Andar and Malika feel an attraction to each other, but the Delvian isn't sure she wants to open her heart to another after what happened to her Peacekeeper husband.   
  
Sean Crichton - 70 years after the disappearance of astronaut John Crichton, his descendant Sean uses John and DK's research to construct the Wander module. In an attempt to prove that his ancestor's theories were sound, Sean repeats the slingshot effect and is also thrown halfway across the universe only with a slightly different result. The Wander module is somehow draw backward in time to the Farscape module's location and is expelled from a wormhole near Moya. Sean finds himself stunned to be surrounded by a group of aliens and suddenly faced with a family legend.   
  
This story takes place some time after the events in "A Night on the Town" and "The Grandmaster."  
The reference to the events on the ice moon took place as part of the RPG and that story goes into explaining about the neural pathways the control collar left in Berret's body. (Being there had to be a way for the collar's computer to control and communicate data to Berret's brain.) I'm working on getting that story together now and am in the middle of editing it. I hope to put it up here sometime in the future. 


	2. Chapter 1

The waitress set the next round of drinks on the crewmate's table, collected her credits and then wandered off to serve other customers. Berret watched as D'argo down half his Raslek in one smooth gulp. Aeryn and John sat with their backs against the wall, watching the dance floor where Chiana was apparently having the time of her life dancing with any being... male, female, or whatever, who would dance with her. The active Nebari girl was finding it hard to locate a partner that could keep up with her for very long. Rygel was off in the back of the tavern at the gaming tables, the Hynerian hearing the clink of gaming chips; had disappeared in that direction as soon as the crew had arrived. Across from the games was an activities pit where patrons challenged each other to physical games of skill, most of them of the combative type. One game in particular had caught the Shrike's attention. It involved two players facing off on a balance beam and sparring with flexible pad-covered staffs. The object of the game was to be the only player left standing on the beam which was little wider then the total length of his foot from heel to toe. Using the padded staffs the players tried to knock the other off and onto the thick mats below the balance beam. The ongoing game had just finished when the large, shaggy-looking man who had won the last several rounds knocked his current opponent onto the floor. The jubilant spectators were congratulating the reigning champion and collecting their wager winnings when a sweaty Chiana rejoined the table of friends.  
  
The Nebari downed her fresh Raslek faster then even the Luxan had done as she plopped into the empty seat beside Berret.  
"These nurfers don't know how to party, they all get tired too fast," she complained.  
She worked her arm through Berret's and began to try to pull him to his feet.  
"Com'on, Retty. Dance with me," Chiana pleaded.  
The ex-assassin did his best to hold onto his chair against his insistent friend.  
"Pixie, you know I do not know how to dance like that," he replied, trying to beg off.  
"Well, I'll teach you... come on, it'll be fun."  
"I don't think I will like it."  
"You haven't even tried," she retorted.  
"I don't have too, to know I won't," he said.  
Chiana rolled her eyes at her reluctant companion and sat back into her chair,  
"You are such a party-snooper!"   
"Pooper, Chiana. You mean he's a party-POOPER," corrected Crichton.  
"That too!" she said, frowning in disappointment and crossing her thin arms.  
" I know what it is. You need to loosen up," said the Nebari girl a few microts later as she dug through a pocket. She produced a little packet of bluish-green powder and poured some of the contents out into her open palm. "Here... try this. It will help you relax and open up."  
"What is it?" asked Berret, curiosity over-riding his better judgment.  
"Just trust me," Chiana answered as she held her hand up in front of Berret's face. Without warning she gently blew on the powder causing it to fly into the Shrike's face.  
"Whoa Pip! Whadda ya doing?" cried John. "You don't know what that stuff will do to him."  
Chiana gave the human an annoyed look, "Bliz out, Crichton. It's perfectly harmless."  
She turned back to Berret. "Relax and just breathe some of it in," she instructed.  
Berret didn't have much of a choice as he'd already gotten a nose and mouthful of the drug before he could even attempt to avoid breathing it. He blinked his eyes and his nose wrinkled as he screwed his face up. A few microts later he started to sneeze - a lot.  
  
"Chiana, perhaps that wasn't the best of ideas. You remember what happened last time with the wine, don't you?" put in Aeryn.  
Berret momentarily interrupted the discussion as he sneezed so violently that his head snapped around and his long braid of hair whipped out over the table, the metal braid stop on its end knocking over an empty Raslek bottle.  
"Yes," chimed in D'argo, "Now he'll probably be sneezing on us all frelling night."  
Chiana looked dumbfound for a microt as she padded the Shrike on the back.  
"He shouldn't react that way. Don't you feel anything?" she asked him.  
"Y-Yes," answered Berret around his sneezing, "Like my brains are about to run out through my nose."  
"That shouldn't take very long then," said the Luxan in amusement.  
"Don't you at least feel happier?" asked Chiana before Berret could respond to D'argo's dig.  
"NO!" answered the Shrike miserably, but to his relief he was finding that his nose was beginning to itch less as time progressed.  
"I don't understand it? Maybe it doesn't work on humans," said Chiana in thought.  
"Obviously," answered Aeryn with an "I told you so" look on her face.  
The Nebari girl left her friends a few microns later feeling it best to withdrawn when Berret was feeling better enough to glare at her. The rest of the crew went back to drinking and chatting as the girl returned to the safety of the dance floor for the time being. Berret followed the conversation for a few microns and then his attention was drawn back to the game pit. The same champion had just toppled another challenger and the watching crowd wildly cheered the wild-looking man. Without noticing, somewhere along the line Berret began to feel light headed, not light headed as in dizzy but light headed in a pleasant sort of way... almost as if he was detached from all his cares. The pit master had just announced the reigning player as victor and asked if there were any more competitors in the audience.  
"I can do that," Berret announced with happy confidence to the table as he stood up.  
"Do what, J.B.?" asked John puzzled.  
"That," he replied absently as he walked over to the pit.  
Before anyone could stop him, the Shrike disappeared into the crowd and reappeared a few microts later at the foot of the balance beam. The spectators cheered as he leaped up to the length of girder to face the champion. The pit master handed Berret his staff and explained the rules as a matter of formality. At the start signal the titleholder eased his way forward along the plank toward Berret, who simply stood there with a silly grin pasted on his face.  
  
"Oh, he's gonna be creamed," said Crichton as he watched the game from the throng of patrons where they had moved to after the ex-Enforcer left the table.  
"Yup," agreed the Luxan just before he took another swig of Raslek.  
"Definitely doesn't look good," agreed Aeryn with a shake of her head. "Maybe we should get him off of there?"  
"Too late now," rumbled D'argo.  
The Shrike's opponent apparently thought along those same lines as he swung his staff low at Berret's legs, trying to sweep them out from under him and score an easy victory. To his surprise the Shrike leaped straight up in the air over the staff and landed back on the beam as easily as if he were standing flat on the floor. Berret's adversary glanced up to see the Shrike standing there with the same silly grin still on his face. Reversing the route of his padded weapon, he attempted to take Berret in the ribs on the back swing. This time the ex-assassin dropped low and to the crowd's amazement rolled backwards on the narrow beam to let the staff pass over his head. He immediately spring up back to his feet and brought his own staff down in an overhand spin to strike the man a stunning blow to the top of his head. The champion went slack-jawed with shock, the grin on Berret's face turned to one of wild glee as he used his staff to vault over the man. Landing on the timber behind the wobbling player, Berret paused a microt to assess the situation. He seemed to come to a decision and reached out with one forefinger. He gently pushed the man on one shoulder and his opponent toppled from the beam onto the mats below. The mob began to cheer wildly as Berret tossed his staff to the pit master and half cartwheeled off the beam.   
As he passed through the horde, patrons congratulated him on his victory and the show he'd just put on.   
"Well, at least he's smiling now," said John. "Show off!" he muttered in jest to Berret as he walked by.  
"Yes," drawled Aeryn. "But why does he look like he's on a mission now?"  
  
Berret felt oddly revved up, like he could accomplish anything and nothing was beyond his grasp or want. He was aware of feeling strangely charged with pent up energy... and the energy needed to be released. Holding it back made him feel as if he would explode at any microt. The beam game had been too tame and something nearby called to that feral pent-up feeling, something he should be reaching out for. He made it to the dance floor and immediately spied Chiana watching him. The Nebari girl had seen the contest from her place at the edge of the crowd. Noticing she had Berret's attention, she began to gyrate her hips in time to the pulsing music and gave him her best come-hither look. Berret found something untamed stirring deep inside him while he watched the way Chiana moved as she slowly made her way toward him. There was something exciting and animalistic about it. She neither fully smiled nor frowned; her lips pursed tight as a new flower's petals. Her eyes where hooded almost as if she where studying him as a predator did it's prey. That something inside him reared at the Nebari girl's unspoken challenge, he found himself being drawn closer to her without realizing it. When they met on the dance floor, she moved near and began to sway her body close enough to him that he imagined he could feel her lithe form radiate heat. Chiana's movements were teasing, as they didn't quite touch his body. He found himself mirroring her trying to bring her closer only to have her slip further away from him as she drew him deeper into the mass of dancers. She eventually stopped and laid one palm on his chest, still moving in her hypnotic way.  
"Move with me, like this..." she purred to him in a low sultry voice.  
Berret followed her, not wanting to break contact with those dark eyes at any cost... he'd found that wild-thing he had been seeking.  
A few microts later she pressed her self tight against him, their bodies still moving in rhythm with each other. She draped her arms around his neck as she rewarded him with a smile.  
"That's good. See... you can do it," she encouraged. She normally thought of his eyes as being the color of pure blue ice; now as he gazed at her, Chiana found herself thinking they were more like electric cobalt fire. For a change, Berret took the initiative and leaned down to passionately kiss the Nebari woman.  
"Only because I'm with you," he told her when they finally broke the embrace.   
  
Danner watched the Nebari female and the Sebacean man dance. "Johvanna! Why don't they just start frelling right there on the floor like animals," he said to his partner.  
Nanno glanced over at his friend, the statement bringing him out of his thoughts as he watched the couple.  
"Its more interesting then just a little interspecies frickfracking. You saw the way he easily won the staff and beam contest, didn't you?" he asked.  
When he received an affirmative nod from Danner he went on to explain further.  
"Do you notice his boots?"  
Danner looked back over and inspected the footwear the man was wearing,   
"Yeah, they got some kind of metal on them... so the frell what?"  
"I've seen some like them before. There's only one type of being I know who wears boots that would have pulse armor like that on them. Those are part of a Syndicate Enforcer's garb."  
"An underworld assassin? Are you sure?" asked Danner in mild interest.  
"Relatively, judging by his skill on the balance beam. I doubt he's still with the Syndicate any longer; he's probably gone rogue."   
Nanno considered the man as he nuzzled the Nebari girl to her obvious delight.  
"You think the Scarrens will pay a reward for him?" Danner asked him after a few microts thought.  
"Maybe," replied Nanno. "If not, maybe we can use him to help in some of our business ventures."  
"Do you think he'll be interested in cutting a deal to work for us?"  
Nanno smiled evilly, "Who said anything about cutting a deal? We still have some of the slaver collars, don't we?"  
  
Chiana cried out in pleasure and then collapsed on top of Berret in exhaustion. The girl panted heavily against his bare chest and then looked up while brushing a lock of wayward hair from her eyes to smile into his face.  
"Did you enjoy that?" she asked breathlessly.  
"Yes," he answered wide-eyed. "Can we do that again?" he murmured a microt later.  
Chiana grinned and laugh quietly, "In a few microns, we need a chance to rest."  
She made as if to roll off of him, but Berret stopped her by hugging her more tightly to him. The Nebari girl murmured pleasurably as she kept her place and snuggled closer against him. Berret stroked her mussed hair as he savored the feel of her warm gray skin against his, and her sweet passion tinted scent.   
"This is turning out to be a very pleasant night," whispered Chiana as she traced a finger along some of the scars on his chest. Idly she wondered to herself where they had all had come from.  
Berret shivered at her light touch and grunted his agreement as he kissed the top of her head.  
"Ya know what would be good about now... a nice bottle of wine. Whadda you think?" she asked.  
Berret cocked an eyebrow at her remembering what happened the last time they drank wine... and still not trusting her after the earlier powder incident. Still the evening had turned out better then he could have hoped for and he was disinclined to deny the woman anything she desired at that point.  
"Whatever you want," he told her with a content smile.  
Chiana's own smile grew wider, "Good. I'll order it if you go get some ice to keep it cold."  
Berret gave her a mock frown, "I knew I'd have to do some work somewhere in there."  
Chiana playfully slapped the man on the chest, "Com'on, just go get some."  
Berret reluctantly untangled himself from the beautiful Nebari girl and then rose from the bed to begin to dress as she ordered the bottle over the room's comm unit. He sat back down on the bed beside her to put his boots on. Chiana stretched out sumptuously on the bed next to him.  
"At least there's a ice making machine on every floor. John says that seems to be a universal constant with every rooming house," Berret said in idle chatter. He glanced back down at the Nebari woman. Chiana was now lying flat on her stomach, half covered by the bed's sheets. She gazed up at him with dark sparkling eyes, just listening to him talk. She looked so exquisite that Berret couldn't help but run his hand down her smooth back, delighting in the feel of every toned muscle. Chiana closed her eyes and purred at his gentle touch.  
"Chiana... I..." he started to say as the girl opened her eyes and placed a forefinger against his lips to forestall what he was about to tell her.  
"Tell me when you get back," she rose up and pressed her silky lips against his in a tender kiss.  
"We have all night," she said when she pulled away.  
Berret smiled and nodded. "I'll be right back," he told her.  
Picking up the ice bucket he hurried out the door to the ice machine, leaving his holstered pulse pistol hanging from the bedpost with Chiana's.  
  
Berret walked down the hallway to the square box-like machine that made and stored ice chips for the guest's use. He considered that the powder Chiana had used on him and probably on herself also had altered their normal behaviors. He knew that younger Nebari used sex as a form of recreation so he tried his best not to read anything serious into their encounter tonight. As badly as he wanted to live the fantasy, he knew better then to believe that the girl would ever consider him for a serious relationship. He was sure that after all the dark and evil acts he'd committed as an Enforcer that Chiana couldn't bare to think about them as a serious couple. Still, he planned to push all those negative thoughts from his head at least for the rest of the night. He at least could have the fantasy for a short time, and surely he could dare to hope for just that much. Berret just wished that the courage to act on the desire for her company in this way hadn't come from the bluish-green powder, without it, he was sure he never would have had the nerve to approach her as he had tonight. He felt good enough to try and explain to her how he felt about her even though deep inside himself he knew that they could never be together that way. Chiana deserved someone better then him after her hard life, but he wanted her to know anyway. It was important that she knew what she had come to mean to him. He began the rehearse in his head what exactly he would say so the girl would know he understood where their relationship stands, and she wouldn't have to feel uncomfortable trying the let him down easy.  
  
He passed two male guests in the corridor that nodded at him in greeting as they walked by. Berret returned the nod and opened the ice machine, not giving the pair of men anymore thought. He shoveled out the first scoop of ice into his bucket when something crackling with electricity hit him in the back and slammed him forward into the ice machine. The Shrike realized then that he couldn't feel his legs or move his arms as he slid to the carpeted floor. Two pairs of feet pounded closer and Berret found he couldn't rise or turn his head either.   
"Got him," said an excited voice.  
"Stop gawking and get it on him!" snapped a second voice.   
Someone grabbed him by the hair and painfully lifted his head up. In the next instant something cold and metallic slid around his neck and snapped shut.  
Berret's mind began to fill with horror as he realized what the thing around his neck was.  
"No!" he cried in denial  
"Oh yes," said the second voice as a hand appeared in front of his eyes holding a control device.  
"Pleasant dreams," the voice said as a finger pushed a button.  
Blinding pain ran through Berret's body just before the world went dark.  
  
An arn later the crewmates sat around Chiana's room attempting to calm the girl.  
"We have to do something!" she exclaimed close to panic. "We have to find him."  
"We are going to, Chiana. Losing your frelling mind is not going to help matters," said Aeryn.  
"We got to call somebody," the Nebari said almost as if she hadn't heard the ex-Peacekeeper.  
"Who Pip? Local law enforcement?" asked Crichton calmly. "Did you forget we're fugitives ourselves?"  
Chiana looked more frustrated and frantic as she realized they weren't coming up with much in the way of a course of action.  
"We will find Berret ourselves, without any help from the local authorities," rumbled the Luxan.  
"Okay," said John, "We know that he made it to the ice machine because we found the bucket from Chi and J.B.'s room on the floor there. Someone must have surprised him from behind while he was filling it."  
"I think it would be difficult for anyone to sneak up behind Berret and ambush him," Aeryn said in thought. "He might be human but he's an augmented Shrike assassin also."  
"Maybe he was distracted and didn't see them coming?" offered Crichton, also thinking out loud.  
John's comment seemed to upset Chiana further, her eyes wandering to the left behind weapon the man should have taken with him. Seeing the girl's reaction and putting it together with the disheveled bed, the unopened bottle of wine, and their earlier behavior, Aeryn's eyes lit up in understanding. The two had finally become actual lovers.  
"Hey, Pip? What's wrong now?" asked John slightly confused. "He could have just been thinking of..."  
Crichton cut off as he caught Aeryn's eye and then followed her darting glance about the room. Things fell together for him in the next instant as he read all the unmistakable signs of a romantic evening.  
"Oh, I see," he said as he caught on, "Well, I guess then he can't be blamed for being... distracted."  
John draped an arm over the girl's shoulder and gave her a hug.  
"Don't worry, Pip. We'll find out who's got him and get him back," he promised.  
John turned to the huge Luxan. "Darg, lets see if we can find Sparky and get the rest of the gang down here. When everyone's here, then we start tearing this joint up."  
"I agree totally," rumbled the warrior, happy to end the talking and finally take action.  
  
Berret awoke to find himself held upright against a metal wall. He could still feel the collar locked around his throat in addition to metal bands around his wrists and the ankle's of his armored boots. It seemed to be the collar and the four metal bands that were holding him to the wall. He was momentarily relieved to find that he hadn't lost his sense of self, so the collar couldn't have been a control collar as he'd first feared. The Shrike tried pulling against his restraints to the point where he felt muscle tear from the strain. Still he was nowhere close to budging the metal bonds from their attachment to the wall.  
Almost an arn later the door to the metal room opened and the two men from the hotel strolled in.  
"I see our new friend is finally awake," said the taller one.  
The other smiled a cockeyed smile at the remark while the first one went on,  
"I hope you had a pleasant nap?"  
"Why don't you let me down and I'll tell you all about it," suggested Berret.  
"No, no, no," replied the taller one as if disregarding a proposal at a business meeting. "I'm afraid letting a Shrike assassin run free would not be in our best interest at the moment."  
Berret tried to cover his surprise that the pair knew what he was. "What do you want?" he asked in a neutral tone.  
"Well, we have need of someone with your skills in our little enterprise. We're sure you'll be a fine asset to our business."  
Berret laughed out loud, "You think I'll kill people for you? Not likely. Tell you what, you cut me down and I promise to let you live."  
The tall one smirked at the Shrike's offer. "Oh, you will do whatever we tell you too. You've no doubt by now realized you can't break free from the wall. Those are magnetic graviton manacles, not even three Luxans working together would be strong enough to break even one of them away from their hold on the cell wall. You're also wearing a typical slaver's collar with graviton enchantments now. We have an acquaintance that is in the process of securing the proper equipment as we speak. You are familiar with the control collar the Syndicate uses on its slaves, aren't you?" he asked.  
Berret glared with hate at the two beings in the room with him, not daring to let them see the fear growing in his eyes.  
"I see you are," said his captor. "Well, you should just relax and enjoy the rest of the day. It's the last one you're going to remember." The men turned together and headed for the doorway.  
"I changed my mind," called the Shrike.  
The two men turned back at their prisoner's statement.  
"I'm going to kill you both," Berret finished. 


	3. Chapter 2

Aeryn and John had left to meet Malika, Zhaan, and Andar at the shuttle port while D'argo went to start the search for their missing crewmate after Rygel failed to answer his comm. Chiana found she wasn't able to remain in her room any longer so she headed back down to the Tavern level. She'd hoped she'd find some clue as to Berret's whereabouts and the club was as good a place to start as any. She entered into the establishment that was fairly empty so early in the day. To her disgust, Rygel was still at his game table gambling with a few other diehards. The Hynerian had probably turned his communicator off so he wouldn't be disturbed at his vice. The Nebari girl grew angry at the sight of the small being with some sort of lit and smoking weed hanging from his frog-like lips and she started to stalk over in his direction.  
"Hey, you there! Little dancing girl!" called a friendly voice before she could reach Rygel's table.  
Chiana turned to see Berret's opponent from the balance beam contest waving at her from the gaming pit.  
The girl changed directions and stepped down into the contest area, hoping the man could tell her something.  
"Where is your tall, skinny friend?" he asked, dashing her hopes. "I hope he will be back tonight to give me a rematch. Tonight I will not drink until I knock him to the mats," he vowed good naturely.  
The man was some sort of Sebacean offshoot, not only was he big and burly but he had a full wild head of hair and a shaggy beard to match. Crichton had mentioned upon their arrival in the tavern that the man reminded him of someone called a "Viking." The man was jovial enough and friendly to everyone, except when it came to the staff game, and then he defended his title with gusto. He had earlier spent several arns trying to talk D'argo into giving him a match.  
  
Chiana searched her mind for the friendly man's name but after all the drinking and dancing last night it had escaped her.   
"I'm sorry, I was half gizsooed last night and I can't remember what your name is," she apologized.  
The man waved on meaty hand in dismissal. "That's all right. Everyone had a good time last night. I dare say there are several lads who will never dance again after the way you wore them out," he said with a deep chuckle. "My name is Brunt... and I must confess in all the excitement last night I drank more then was reasonable myself as your name has slipped my mind also."  
The cheery man gave her an impish grin and then added, "Or perhaps it was knocked from my head on purpose by your jealous boyfriend. I can see why he would want a lovely like you all to himself.  
He gave Chiana a wink that made her feel better of a few microts.   
"Chiana," she replied, holding out one gloved hand for him to shake. Despite his size, the grip and the shake were gentle.  
"So will he give me a rematch so I may win the bout in your honor?" he asked.  
Chiana slight smile faded and so did Brunt's friendly beam as he thought he'd said something to offend the girl.  
"That's a problem. He disappeared from our room sometime last night and I can't find him."  
"You mean he just left you?" asked Brunt being serious now. "He just upped and walked out on you?" he continued in disbelieve.  
"No," replied Chiana. "We think someone kidnapped him in the hotel hallway. Have you ever heard of something like that ever happening here?" she asked.  
"I see," Brunt said as he began to understand, "There have been cases of persons being snatched to serve aboard ships as extra crew... but as far as I know nothings ever happened like that here in this club."  
The Nebari considered the man's information, "I really doubt that's it. I think someone looking to hijack crewmembers would have found they'd bitten off more then they could chew with Berret."  
"Yes, I could see where that might be a problem. Your friend, Berret is it?" he asked and waited until Chiana nodded an affirmative, "He did seem like he is a skilled fighter, but still... if he was jumped from behind by two or three beings who knew their business, he could be a prisoner aboard some freighter."  
Chiana had to concluded that might actually be a possibility. Brunt saw the distress in the young girl's eyes and set one large hand lightly on her shoulder in comfort.  
"Let me ask around. I know some people who might have an idea where your friend might be," he said.  
"You would do that for us?" asked Chiana.  
"Of course," said Brunt as if surprised that she would think he would do anything else. "After all... how can there be a rematch if your friend Berret is off scrubbing decks somewhere. There's my honor and reputation to defend and drinks to be wagered. You have to get the priorities straight, my girl."   
  
"I can't believe that man had to go and turn up missing. Can't he stay out of trouble for three lousy microts?" asked a miffed Malika from her seat on the Transport Pod.  
Besides her, Andar stifled a yawn behind one hand and then scratched the stubble along one cheek. The emergency call had caught him barely an arn after he had retired to his quarters to sleep. The Sebacean man had declined heading planet side in favor of spending time locked inside his little electronics lab working on one of his projects that his crewmates where forever keep in the dark about. The man enjoyed secreting himself away and tinkering around, building the devices that sometime appeared to his mind's eye. Often when he had a vision he became obsessed and disappeared for days until the machine was finished. Some of his creations not even Zhaan or Aeryn could understand how he constructed them and he couldn't explain them to his friends either. He just saw them, automatically understood them, and then built them. This last device intrigued him because for the first time the device wasn't a random thing he seen, this time he had needed a timing device for a piece of equipment in Malika's lab and after looking over the machine in question, the timing circuit seemed to construct itself in his mind. He was so excited that he chose not to accompany the rest of the others planet side and instead rushed to his worktable and began assembling the component. Besides, Malika had elected to stay behind and meditate with Zhaan and he had no interest in going to see the nightspots the world offered without the Delvian girl's company.  
"We don't know that it's Berret's fault that he's missing, Malika," answered Zhaan from the pilot's seat.  
"We have to remember that all of us are at risk of being captured at any time. We are all fugitives."  
Zhaan flared the Pod for landing and the transport's landing gear deployed with a reassuring thump. The ship settled to the ground and the Pa'u could see Aeryn and Crichton approaching the craft through the forward view port. She moved to the hatchway as Andar began pulling extra pulse rifles from the weapon's rack and passed them out.   
  
"Come on, Toad-face!" said Chiana as she yanked on one of Rygel's floppy ears.  
"Yeow! What the hezmana do you think you're doing, you skinny assed bitch? I'm in the middle of a game... and I'm winning!" cried the Hynerian in outrage.  
Chiana pushed her angry-looking face closer to Rygel's, "Well, if you had left your comm on; you would know we've got trouble. Berret's been taken."  
"That's exactly why I turned it off, and what should I care if your pet's run off?"  
The Nebari shook the smaller being in frustration, "You're not listening... somebody took him, he didn't run off. And he is not my 'pet'!" Chiana released Rygel and let him fall back into his thronesled.  
"Get your winnings. You're coming with me to help find him," she ordered.  
Rygel gave her one of his insincere smiles, "Certainly... you go on ahead and I'll catch up in a few microns as soon as I finish here." Rubbing his stubby fingers together, he turned back to his table and the waiting players.  
"RYGEL!" snapped Chiana, "Now!"  
"All frelling right!" grumbled the Dominar as he scooped his gaming chips into his lap. "You'll have to excuse me," he said to the other gamblers at his table, "My incompetent crew has an emergency and they can't find their eemas with both hands without my help. We shall continue our game at a later time."  
With a small bow, he spun the floating chair around and followed Chiana out of the club to meet the others.   
"You better appreciate this, you little tramp," he complained as he moved up next to her. "You and that idiot toy of yours have cost me a lot of credits tonight. I was just setting them up for the kill, they were so ripe for plundering..."  
"I get the picture," Chiana cut him off. "As soon as we find Berret you can go back and gamble to your hearts content."  
"What's the matter with you?" asked Rygel, "Since when is somebody else more important then making an easy profit?"  
"I dunno. My priorities have changed," admitted the Nebari woman somewhat distractedly.  
"Great Goddess, Girl! You know better then to put someone else before your own survival. Those extra credits could mean the difference between whether I live or die at some point in the future. That damned Crichton is starting to give you some bad habits. Rushing off to find that useless hunk of meat. Good riddance I say."  
Chiana turned to glare down at Rygel, "I'll remember that advice the next time you get into trouble and need somebody to rush off to rescue you."  
  
Nanno looked down at the rusted circle of metal in his hands and then back up at the filthy humanoid dressed in rags before him.  
"What the frell do you expect me to do with this?" he asked in anger.  
"You wanted a control collar, I brought you a control collar," replied the man innocently.  
Nanno shook the device in the man's face and screamed, "This piece of dren is over fifty cycles old! It won't even control an elderly Vork."  
He dashed the collar to the floor of the cell and grabbed the man by his shirtfront, feeling the worn material rip in his hands as he drew the man in closer.  
"You see that?" he said as he pointed at Berret, "That... is a Shrike assassin. Do you know what he would do to us if we relied on that useless collar and turned him lose? I need a new modern collar!"  
"You didn't say what the collar was for," pleaded the man, "Newer collars are very expensive and hard to come by."  
"I don't care what it costs. Get me one and don't return without it"  
He released the ragged man with a push and he scurried out of the cell away from his angry employer. Behind Nanno, Berret began to chuckle dryly.  
"Having trouble with the rule of supply and demand?" the Shrike taunted.  
Nanno turned to the man and shouted, "Be quiet!"   
He pulled out the control device from a pocket and pointed it at Berret. When he pushed the button, a serve shock coursed through the ex-assassin's body, much worse then the first time. Berret realized that there was probably a device in the cell wall to amplify the current passing through his body, causing him to convulse so badly that he involuntary bite the inside of his mouth.  
"Did that teach you some manners?" asked Nanno after he shut the mechanism off.   
"Eat dren, Freller," Berret said in pure hate as he spat out a mouthful of blood.  
"Not a good answer," replied Nanno as he hit the switch once again. This time Berret screamed.   
  
Berret slumped semi-conscious against his bonds. His body filled with the slight burning sensation of the microbes struggling to repair the damage done by the electricity to his convulsing muscles. His captors hadn't seen fit to feed him since they brought him in and the stress of the unfed microbe's work was starting to show in his face, as it became more haggard looking. He drifted into waking dreams where he saw what he assumed to be people he'd killed in his Syndicate past, the same crowd that always awaited him in his nightmares. This time Chiana would be there sometimes in the throng watching him as he faced his silent accusers. At first her face shined with something more then just lust. "Could it be love?" he asked himself. Dare he hope the Nebari woman could feel such for somebody like him? He felt himself smiling back at her but then she began to look around them, seemingly to notice the silent bloody beings all for the first time. Her smile slowly faded as she realized they were all staring accusingly at Berret. He looked down and saw the gory blades from his gauntlets, the blood covering his hands. Chiana saw them too, with a sad look she turned away from him in slow motion and began to walk away. The crowd parted for her as she passed but then flowed back together in her wake. Berret tried to follow her, calling her name, wanting her to wait so he could explain... wanting her to smile at him again. The mob refused to let him through, blocking his way to the Nebari woman. He thought about forcing his way through, of fighting his way to her so he could make her listen, but a small child stepped in front of him. His chest torn open and the wound and his body now drained bloodless. His face a deathly pale, his dark accusing eyes showing the only spark of animation.  
"I never had the chance for a life," he said in a voice as cold as a grave, his gaze following the Nebari, "You don't deserve the chance either for what you done to us."  
Berret looked in horror at the ghost, "I didn't mean it. They made me do all those things, I didn't want too."  
His plea fell on dead unfeeling ears. "It doesn't matter now," said the boy. "She's seen us. Seen you for what you really are."  
Berret looked back up and tried to find Chiana somewhere in the crowd, she was nowhere to be seen.  
"She could never love you now," continued the child.  
"Never want to be near you," said another voice from the mob.  
"She could never bare to look at you," called a woman with a slashed throat.  
"Never share a life with you like the one you've taken from us," chimed in another ghost.  
The boy reached up and pulled on his belt, bringing his attention back to him.  
"Do you really want to ask her to live with what you are? To mare her life with your sins. Do you really have that right?" The child's eyes were glassy and hard, his cold stare boring deep into Berret's soul.  
Swallowing hard, the Shrike barely whispered, "No."   
With that single word, hope began to die.  
  
"Why are we even wasting our time?" said Rygel for what seemed the hundred time in the last few arns.  
Chiana did her best to ignore the complaining Hynerian and cursed her luck for being paired to search with him. They wandered the street randomly stopping people that her experience and street-smarts told her "were in the know," those who had their ear to what was happening in the streets and in the city's underground. She could smoothly fit in with the seamier side of life she found there and she spoke the denizen's language fluidly. After winning a minuet bit of trust from a street person, she showed them Berret's holo-image, but no one she'd spoken with thus far would admit remembering seeing him or heard of anyone looking for somebody with his talents.  
"He's probably run off to do whatever vile thing it is that Shrike's do when they get the urge to kill something... or someone," Rygel continued.  
The Nebari girl started to fume. The only one who could possibly be complaining worse about having to look for Berret then Rygel, was Malika. Judging by the put out expression the Delvian wore after arriving she was wondering if Andar had to put up with the same type of complaining at that microt.  
"He didn't run off I told you," she growled at the smaller being.  
"Hah!" barked Rygel, "Then maybe you frelled him scared with your un-natural sex drive."  
Chiana paused for a microt, her face going dark as she silently counted to ten in an attempt not to rip the Hynerian's head off before turning around to face him.  
"Listen... Frog-face," she began in a carefully controlled tone, "I didn't do anything. Somebody kidnapped him and now is not the time to argue about it. So shut up and help me talk to people."  
Not getting as big a rise out of the Nebari as he'd hoped, Rygel mouth turned downward in a frown.  
"He really means that much to you?" he asked more subdued.  
Chiana turned and started walking again, thinking about Rygel's question. "Well... yeah," she finally replied with a slight shake of her head as if she was having trouble understanding why he mattered so much to her. Even though she knew the truth of the matter.  
"Why?" asked the persistent Hynerian as he floated along beside her.  
"I dunno. He needs me," she answered as she picked up her pace, hoping speed would end the Hynerian's questions. Rygel simply increased the speed of his thronesled to keep up with her.  
"He's a Syndicate Enforcer. He's probably frelling killed more people then you will ever know. He doesn't need anyone," the Dominar intoned.  
Chiana wheeled on him. "Don't you think I know that?" she exclaimed. "He didn't ask to be made into what they made him. Don't you think I don't see the pain and shame in his eyes when he's reminded? At night when he wakes up in a cold sweat and tries to lay still so not to wake me... don't you think I know what it's about?"  
Rygel remained silent but regarded her with knowing eyes, allowing her to go on speaking.  
"Finally there's someone on this frelled up boat who treats me as an equal, not as some child who can't take care of herself. Someone who needs me and listens to what I have to say for a change, but its like he holds me just far enough away so I can't touch who he really is. Like he's afraid something bad will happen if he did let me in. How do you think I feel when I thought I was making progress only to have his past rise up and build up that wall between us again? Tonight, we were actually together like real people. I could touch him and he didn't back away from me... he was going to open up to me and someone snatched him before that could happen. I'm grised, Rygel! Really frelling grised... so don't you go giving me anymore grief about it."  
The Hynerian pursed his lips and then asked, "But what do you get out of it?"  
"What do you mean?" she asked as her eyes narrowed, expecting a trick question from the Hynerian.  
"I want to know... what's your end for helping him?"  
Chiana shook her head in bewilderment. "There is no end. He just needs me, that's all," she told him.  
Rygel gave her a small knowing smile as if he'd just pulled something over on her, but she couldn't see what it could have been. She bent down closer to him with a frown spreading across her gray face.  
"There's always an end in all things a person does," he told her while shaking one small finger at the end of her pale nose. "I was just wondering if you figured out what yours was concerning Berret yet."  
He delivered that last statement as if he knew something she didn't, instead of as a question. She waited a microt for him to explain himself but instead he set his hand back on his sled control and moved on down the street away from her. Chiana turned to watch him go, wondering for a microt what she'd just missed. Shrugging her shoulders, she decided to just be happy with the fact that Rygel was now actively helping her search for the missing Berret instead of complaining. With a small sigh she started to follow him along the street.   
  
Crichton adjusted the Pulse-rifle's sling over his shoulder as he and Aeryn headed back to the club they had been staying at to rendezvous with the others. He was glad that Zhaan had thought to bring the extra weapons down with them. While "Winnona" still rode on his thigh in her holster, the weight of the rifle was reassuring, especially since someone was running around snatching people for some reason. Aeryn was in deep thought as they approached the meeting place at the front door to the establishment and he'd found it was best to leave the woman to her thoughts in such matters. Sometimes her Peacekeeper experience gave her insights or options none of them ever considered, and sometimes the alternative options didn't involve blowing something up. He went over the situation in his own mind. Someone or something had snuck up on a Syndicate Enforcer, supposedly the biggest and baddest hitmen in the Territories, and had taken him out without alarming or alerting anyone in the hotel. While Berret was sometimes slow on the uptake, he'd seen the man fight and knew he could be a vicious killer when he had to be. No matter how much killing distressed the man when he thought about having to do it, it seemed to come naturally to him when the heat was on. The thought that someone could take him out so easily gave him the willies, and he was awful glad when Andar handed him the Pulse-rifle.  
They rounded the final corner and the club doorway came into sight. D'argo, Malika, Andar, Zhaan, Rygel, and Chiana where already waiting for them there.  
"It looks like we're the last to arrive," commented Aeryn idly.  
Crichton nodded silently and noticed that Chiana didn't look too happy so he gathered that no one else had any luck so far either in locating the Shrike. "Poor Pip is taking this hard," he thought.  
He knew Chiana was blaming herself for Berret forgetting to take his weapon with him, not that it might have done any good anyway. As Aeryn and D'argo pointed out there wasn't much in the way of sights of a struggle.  
John was still amazed at the change in the Nebari girl since she adopted the ex-assassin. While she still played the imp most of the time he had noticed that the young girl had matured with having taken responsibility for the man. While Aeryn with her strict PK sense of duty still believed the pair were still little more then undisciplined children, Crichton being a little more laid back and forgiving, saw the changes in them. Being around Berret had made Chiana less self-centered and more thoughtful where others were concerned. For Berret's part, Chiana at this point seemed to be the only one who could reach him. He'd tried numerous times to connect with the man as one human to another, but after each discussion he'd gotten frustrated as the man regarded him with unemotional and unblinking eyes. Not seeming to understand the human need for guys to relax and just shoot the breeze with other guys. He'd had better luck getting D'argo to understand Earth-type subjects. However when Chiana spoke to him, his eyes finally took on signs of life. Even when they were bickering or she was pulling pranks on him, there was an underlying look of... adoration... for the Nebari girl in them. It was almost as if she was the only person in the universe that he considered real to him. If ever John had seen another person in love it was Berret. He just didn't know if it was amusing or sad that the Shrike didn't know it yet. He just hoped Chiana realized it soon and did something about it one way or another. As much as she had grown up, he didn't think she'd be able to change her ways that much. Monogamy didn't seem to be in the Nebari dictionary and he was sure that being human... when Berret came to terms with his feelings, he'd be crushed by Chiana's rather free ranging lifestyle. Still, at least the man was able to relate to another living being and it was a start to him reclaiming what was left of his humanity after his treatment at the hands of the Scarren Syndicate. 


	4. Chapter 3

Danner frowned deeply as he inspected the unconscious Shrike. The man looked as if he'd been run through a battlefield without sleep for three days.  
"He doesn't look so good," he said as he turned to his partner.  
"He needed a little attitude adjustment, perhaps the voltage setting doesn't have to be set so high?" responded Nanno. He joined Danner by the assassin and looked their prisoner over.  
"That cur, Lassar, better come up with a proper control collar soon or I'll have his filthy hide. With that we'll be able to control him without any problems. Then there will be no more need to shock him," Nanno explained to the other man.  
Danner frown evolved into a look of concern. "What if someone comes looking for him?" he asked.  
"Who? He's a renegade Enforcer. It's almost guaranteed that nobody knows he was here."  
"What about the Nebari girl?"  
"What about her?"  
"She knows he was here," Danner persisted.  
"So what? What can she do? She's probably just some party girl and the gray piece of trash has most likely moved on to some other male," Nanno replied with the up most surety.  
Danner shook his head. "I don't know. I still have a bad feeling about this," he muttered.  
"Look, if she somehow shows up looking for him... we'll just bliz her out on some of our product... have a little fun with the tralk... and then have our new collared partner here break her neck when we're done with her. See? No problem at all, other than disposing of the body," explained Nanno with a sinister grin. Danner remained silent as he looked back at the man pinned to the wall. Nanno's plan seemed sound enough, but somehow he felt the idea would fall apart at the first opportunity with this assassin involved in it.  
  
The rest of the crew had already returned to the streets in the attempt to find the missing Shrike. Chiana stood by the bar drumming her fingers on the wooden surface as she waited for Rygel to return from his room so they could do the same. She'd just made the decision to go up and drag the Hynerian down when she heard a familiar booming voice from behind her.  
"Hey, Dancing Girl! Chiana... there you are," called Brunt.  
"Brunt, any word?" she asked anxiously as the man came to her side.   
The large man shook his wild mane of hair in a negative gesture.  
"I'm afraid not. Nobody has seen anyone matching your friend's description or has even heard of any accounts of beings being shanghaied this weeken."  
Chiana's hopes died and Brunt could see her pain clearly written on the girl's face.  
"I'm sorry, Chiana. The only unusual things I've come across since I've been looking is that somebody is looking for some questionable holo-vids of an adult nature and somebody else is searching for some type of Scarren slave collar... and that's no help at all," he said by way of apology.  
Chiana face lit up suddenly, "What was that? What did you just say?" she asked excitedly.  
"I said, I haven't found anyone who's seen your friend..." Brunt repeated dumbfounded.  
"No, after that. What did you say about a 'collar'?"  
"I said that one thing I heard that was out of the ordinary is that someone was looking for a strange Scarren device... some kind of collar."  
"A collar," repeated the Nebari as Rygel arrived to join them, "A Scarren control collar? Is that what it was?"  
"Yes, that sounds more like it... what of it?" asked Brunt, even more confused.  
Chiana let out a shrill cry and then grabbed the man by his unruly hair and surprised him by kissing him soundly on the lips.   
"You did it! You found a lead to him!" she almost shouted and then began to do a little victory jig in celebration.  
"I did?" Brunt said, now convinced that the poor girl had broken under the stress of her missing companion. Rygel did a better job of keeping himself under control and pointedly ignored the dancing Chiana.  
"Do you know who exactly is looking for this control collar?" he asked the man.  
"A street person named 'Lassar' was asking around about one," Brunt answered. "Is she all right?" he asked while jerking a meaty thumb at the jubilant Nebari girl.  
"Unfortunately... yes," drawled the Hynerian.  
Chiana bounced back between the two and draped her arms over both male's shoulders.  
"Now... where can we find this Lassar?" she asked with a big smile.  
  
The place was a dive, filled mostly with refugees from the streets and down on their luck spacers... Chiana almost felt right at home. She'd spent a lot of time in worse establishments during her cycles on the run with her brother.   
"I don't like this place," complained Rygel as he looked over the rough crowd.  
"Bliz out, Shrimp," said the girl, "We'll be out of here as soon as we find out what we want to know."  
After refusing his offer of accompanying them, Brunt had given the pair a good description of Lassar. The ragged filthy man standing at the dingy bar ahead of them fit the profile to a "T". Chiana pointed the fellow out to the Hynerian and started forward.  
"Wait," said Rygel as he grabbed her arm to halt her, "We should wait until the others get here to back us up." The small being nervously eyed the several other street drudges that the man was talking too.  
"Why? I'm just gonna talk to him. Nothin' will happen," assured the Nebari with a smile as she stepped forward toward the man despite the Hynerian's misgivings and warning for caution.  
"Damn foolish girl," mutter Rygel as he watched her go. A microt later he keyed his comm badge and began talking excitedly into it.  
Chiana approached the group and put her best sexy and friendly smile on.  
"Hiya," she said out loud as she sauntered up. The group turned as one to face her. "You're Lassar, aren't ya?" she asked the man.  
"Who wants to know?" he asked suspiciously.  
"No one important," she said, "I heard that you're looking to buy a control collar. I might know where you could buy one." She stepped closer to him. "Excellent Scarren tech," she promised.  
"Do you now, girl?" he replied with a disbelieving sneer.  
"Yeah... but if you're not interested..." she bluffed and started to turn away.  
"Wait a minute," he called with a scowl and then pointed one dirty finger in her direction. "You're her, ain't ya? They said you might come nosing around. Do yourself a favor, girl... and just go home and stop asking questions." He turned his back on her in dismissal.  
"Who said!" demanded Chiana as she grabbed the man's arm and spun him back to face her. "I want to know who you are talking about."  
Behind her, Rygel let out a groan. "So much for nothing not happening," he muttered to himself.  
Lassar uttered a curse and leaped off his stool to shove Chiana hard in the chest. Taken by surprised the Nebari woman fell over backwards to land on the floor. Nearby Patrons chucked as Lassar moved to stand over her and angrily shake a fist in the prone girl's direction.  
"I said go home before you don't have that choice, you little bitch," he threatened.  
Lassar got a surprise himself a microt later as a length of razor-sharp steel suddenly appeared just under his nose. The blade picked upward ever so slightly making the edge nick into the soft tissue there between his nostrils, causing him to rise to his tiptoes to relieve the pressure. His eyes followed the length of the combat knife to find it being held by a young Delvian woman with an evil smile.  
"That... would be so very much...a big mistake," said the blue woman's soft voice.  
Lassar's eyes momentarily shifted in the opposite direction to see why his comrades hadn't rushed to assist him by now to discover they had their own problems... by way of a tall Sebacean man holding a very real and fully charged pulse-rifle casually in one of his hands. The man made a "shooing" motion with his empty hand and the other's at the bar scurried to be elsewhere. Lassar watched, still frozen in place by the big knife as the man helped the Nebari girl to her feet and then walked over to lean casually against the recently vacated bar. He placed one elbow on the counter top and then rested his chin on the hand of that arm. He regarded the street man with a look of boredom.   
"You should probably listen to her... she's in a very bad mood," he said with a tilt of his chin in the Delvian's direction. The blade's edge took another nip at his nose as the woman tilted her wrist up slightly to empathize the armed Sebacean man's words of advice.   
Lassar winced in pain from the nicking his nose was taking and asked, "What do you want?"  
"Answers," said Rygel as he floated closer.  
"Now," put in Malika, adding another painful flick of her wrist.  
"Who wants the control collar and where are they," demanded Chiana.  
"I don't know what you're talking about... I don't know anything," said the man.  
Malika was just about to raise the knife up another notch when Chiana waved her away. The crook sighed with relief when the knife was removed, only to have Chiana step in front of him and kick him between the legs as hard as she could. Andar himself winced from the vicious blow in symphony as the other man fell to the filthy barroom floor in a lump.  
"It might be a good idea to tell her what she wants to know too," recommended the Sebacean idly to the prone man. Chiana grabbed Lassar by the hair and forced him to look at her. She drew a long slim knife from her boot top and brought the sharp tip to within a henta of the man's eye.  
"Tell me what you know... or..." she let the sentence hang as she waved the point of the blade back and forth between his two eyes.   
Lassar began to talk rapidly.  
  
  
"Wake up!"  
Nanno struck the Shrike's face again and got no results for his effort. Muttering, he reached for the pitcher of water he had brought for the man and flung the contents into his face. He almost thought that even the drenching wouldn't work to bring the assassin around, but slowly the prisoner raised his head. Blurry eyed, he looked around and started to mumble to himself.  
"Good. For a microt I thought you'd died," Nanno said.  
Berret's head wobbled back on his neck until it slammed into the wall behind him. He held it there unsteady as he regarded the man through half-hooded eyes.  
"Go away!" he commanded in a slur, "I already killed you."  
"In your dreams, Shrike," sneered Nanno.  
"I'm not going to listen to you anymore. Blame me all you wish," Berret muttered and then asked, "Where's Chiana?"  
"What the frell are you talking about?" Nanno asked as he grabbed the man by his hair and looked into Berret's eyes. No matter how long he waited the other man's eyes refused to focus on him.   
The Shrike was in another world of his own.  
"Dren! What the frell is wrong with you?" demanded Berret's captor.  
"You're dead. You're all dead... and I don't have to talk to you," the Shrike repeated hazily. "I only want to talk to the Pixie. I have to tell her... I have to explain all this to her."  
"Goddess! You're mad," cursed Nanno. "You are no frelling use to me like this. I certainly hope for your sake the collar will correct your mental imbalance."  
"No, no," Berret said while trying to shake his head in emphasis. "I'm not evil. I didn't mean to do all those things. The Syndicate made me do them... I have to tell her... have to tell her so she don't hate me."  
"Who are you talking about?" Nanno asked, curious now.  
To his surprise, Berret answered the question. "The Pixie, Chiana... Where is she?" Berret looked about the room as if he was seeing something Nanno couldn't. "She was here with all of you. She doesn't understand I didn't want to kill anyone. She blames me just like you do. Why wouldn't you let me find her so I can tell her?"  
Nanno began to figure out what the Shrike was hallucinating about, he was looking for a female named Chiana who was important to him. Apparently the shock treatments have sent him into a waking nightmare of his own creation where he believed all the beings he'd killed in his past have returned to haunt him. He thought Nanno himself was somebody he had killed. Perhaps he could use the situation to soften the assassin up for when they attached the collar to him.  
"You are looking for Chiana," he probed.  
"Yes, where is she?" Berret asked with a hint of hope in his voice.  
"She doesn't want to see you," Nanno told him.  
"I need to talk to her."  
"Why? How are you going to be able to explain the fact that you killed her to her?"  
Berret eyes grew large and even more of the color drained from his face at Nanno's statement.  
"No!" Berret denied, "She's alive. She still lives."  
"No," Nanno countered, "You killed her. Why else would she be here with us if she weren't dead."  
"No!" Berret cried again. He was obviously beginning to panic inside his delirium.   
"You murdered her in cold blood just like you did us. She does hate you... hates you more then you can know for what you did to her." Nanno leaned in closer to the man, his voice a sharp whisper. An effect he knew would drive the man over the edge. "She will never forgive you," he hissed in Berret's ear  
The Shrike began to howl wordlessly as his mind started to unravel. Nanno stepped back to examine his handiwork. Whoever this Chiana was, she was obviously the assassin's single hold on his sanity. The only thing keeping the despair of what he'd been as an Enforcer from overwhelming him. The assassin began to thrash against his bonds, for him reality slipped away and was replaced with his nightmares. Nanno had guessed right, the abuse the man suffered at his hands, along with the starvation and his own guilt had snapped the thin veneer of sanity when he'd yanked his only support system out from under him by telling him the female he seemed to care so much for was dead by his hand. He turned and left the gibbering man in his cell. As he closed the door had gave a low chuckle as he thanked whoever this Chiana was for accidentally giving him the key to breaking the Shrike's will and mind. By the time the collar arrived, the Shrike would be a mindless husk; forever trapped in his own nightmarish reality... forever his slave.   
  
In the cell a few microns later Berret had stopped howling... the baying stopping in an instant as if someone shutting off a recording. The Shrike's eyes glazed over blankly, not even the emotion of madness there now. Suddenly he began to recite words in high Scarren speech.   
"First code of service," Berret muttered in a monotone. "Arckatius is king and master."  
"Second code. I serve Arckatius and the Syndicate."   
Berret's body stood up more erect in his bonds.  
"Third code. Arckatius is to be obeyed at any cost."   
Berret's right arm pulled against its manacle with its full force, this time in a downward direction. With a sickening pop, his thumb dislocated and his hand slipped out of the restraint.  
"Forth code. My purpose is to eradicate the enemy."   
Berret brought his right hand over to his mouth. Gripping the dislocated digit with his teeth, he pulled and forced it back into it's joint.   
"Fifth code. Allow nothing to stand in my way."   
Berret flexed his right hand and found it fully operational again. He gripped his left thumb and yanked it out of its socket, then freed his left hand from its bonds.  
"Sixth code. Allow no prey to escape."  
He wrenched the thumb back into it proper place.  
"Seventh code. Leave no witnesses."   
The life drained from Berret's eyes to be replaced by the emotionless calm of a Black Syndicate Enforcer.  
"Eighth code. Nothing will avert my service to house and lord... not even death."  
Shrike457 had been reborn.  
  
D'argo watched the apparently deserted warehouse from around the corner of the neighboring structure. He glanced up at the Sebacean woman on top of the pile of refuse scanning the same building through a pair of occulars.  
"Anything?" he asked Aeryn a microt later.  
The ex-Peacekeeper shook her head. "Nothing since those three entered a quarter arn ago," she said as she jumped down from her perch to join him and the rest of the crew gathered nearby.  
"Are you sure you got the right place?" Crichton asked Chiana and the others who'd returned with her and Rygel. "Are you sure that guy didn't just give you a phony location?"  
"I think it's safe to say he wasn't in a position to lie," put in Andar before the Nebari could answer.  
Chiana nodded. "This is where he said they took Berret," she confirmed.  
"Well? How do you want to handle this?" John asked Aeryn.  
The woman pursed her lips in deep thought and then asked D'argo, "Frontal assault?"  
"Ordinarily, I'd say that was the best option but that place is too large. Berret could be held anywhere inside and they'd probably kill him long before we could locate him if we attacked blindly."  
"Then we have to go in quiet," put in Chiana as she looked from one of her friends to another.  
"Why don't we just forget the whole thing and go home to Moya?" offered Rygel.  
Malika slapped the Hynerian in the back of the head for his trouble, "Forget it, Toad. If I have to be here... then so do you."  
Zhaan frowned slightly at the other Delvian; she was going to have to have a talk with the girl about her temper. Putting the thought to the back of her mind to be dealt with at a latter time she said,  
"Then the best course of action would be to sneak someone inside to look around and locate Berret before we attempt a rescue."  
"But who?" asked Crichton. "It would have to be someone they'd mostly wouldn't notice."  
"I'll go," said Chiana, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to her as John turned his interest toward Rygel.  
"Someone small," Crichton continued as he closed on the Hynerian. Rygel realizing he was about to be volunteered started backing away from the man.  
"I'll go," Chiana said again as Rygel backed his thronesled into D'argo, who moved to block his escape.  
"And sneaky!" rumbled the huge warrior as he placed one hand on the floating chair to halt Rygel's retreat.  
"Why me!" whined the Dominar as he realized he was caught.  
"I said, I'll go!" barked Chiana for a third time and finally succeeded in getting their attention.  
"Pip?" John asked surprised. "You want to go?"  
"Yes, let her go instead," piped in Rygel. "He's her pet after all." Rygel was saved another slap to the head by Malika when Andar caught her arm before she could let it fly.  
"Yeah. I could do it," the Nebari girl answered. "I'm small... and who's better at being sneaky then a professional thief?"  
"She has a point," said Aeryn as she stripped off her black Peacekeeper coat and handed it over to the girl. "Put this on, it will help camouflage you inside." After Chiana took the garment from her and slipped it on, Aeryn turned and regarded the rest of her companions. Singling John and Andar out she said,  
"Okay, boys. Off with the shirts."  
"What?" Andar and Crichton said almost at the same time.  
"Your black undershirts," explained Aeryn. "We need them, so take them off."  
John looked at her confused. "For what?" he asked.  
Aeryn rolled her eyes as if the answer should have been obvious to anyone who wasn't blind.  
"Take a microt to look at Chiana, John. She has white hair and skin that's so gray it's almost white. She needs something to cover them up... so give me your shirt."  
"Oh!" John said, almost embarrassed to not have considered something that was right in front of his face. He slipped out of his jacket and pulled the shirt off and handed it to Aeryn. As he put his coat back on, Aeryn put the shirt on over Chiana's head almost as if she were going to wear it normally. Instead of pulling her head through the neck opening Aeryn placed that over Chiana's eyes like the opening of a mask and tied the sleeves around at the back of the Nebari's head, leaving a strip with only her eyes showing.  
"I learned this trick in commando school," explained Aeryn.  
Despite the situation, Crichton chuckled, "A Ninja Nebari... how cool."  
Aeryn frowned and shook her head at the unfamiliar term but elected not to ask what a "ninja" was.  
"That's a good idea," said Andar as he handed Aeryn his shirt. "I don't think I would have ever thought of it." Aeryn thanked him and immediately ripped the black shirt into strips.  
"Hey!" exclaimed the Sebacean man. "What are you doing to my shirt?"  
Aeryn stopped tearing for a microt. "She needs something to cover the backs of her hands with," she explained. "She can't wear those heavy gloves to climb in. She'll have to be able to feel around for finger holds."  
"Well... why couldn't you have used John's shirt for that?" Andar pouted.  
The ex-Peacekeeper shrugged her shoulders in a human way, something she'd picked up from Crichton.  
"Just luck of the draw, I guess," she told the grumbling man.  
  
Chiana easily scaled the side of the warehouse. It's worn and weathered siding giving her plenty of hand and foot holds for her to pull her lithe body upwards. Once she gained the roof, she quickly found the exhaust vent for the air system and with the help of her slim knife blade was able to pry the rusted cover off without making any noise. She crawled through the opening to find herself among the joists and rafters of the structure. Her black garb made her fit seamlessly in to shadows, allowing her to cover open areas without worry of being detected by anyone who might happen to be below her on the huge storage floor of the building. Even though she moved carefully, she still kicked up the occasion cloud of dust from the rafter beams. The shirt tied over her head acted like a mask to filter out the particles and kept her from sneezing, she idly wondered why she never thought of the trick herself either. Filing the technique under "useful things to do while snurching" for future use, Chiana finally made it across the large storage space to where a row of offices was located. She paused to listen and sure enough she could make out voices somewhere in that area. She crept over several empty rooms; being comprised of nothing more then four walls to separate the spaces, each had no ceiling, allowing her to look down into them as she passed overhead. At the last office by the building's wall she found the source of the voices. Two of the men they seen earlier were inside the office having a conversation before an opening doorway that revealed a stairwell leading down somewhere under the warehouse. Chiana settled herself in to listen. 


	5. Chapter 4

"Are you sure you know how to connect the collar properly?" asked Nanno. The other man, whose name was Sheppard, gave him an oily smile.  
"Of course," he replied. "I fully understand the procedure. I assure you I have done it before for some of the lower Syndicate Houses. Everything will go fine as long as you have my fee handy."  
Nanno glared at the man. "You'll get your credits. Just be absolutely sure you know what you're doing. This isn't some uncooperative pleasure slave we are talking about here. One thing not done right in the procedure and we wouldn't live a microt once we turn that man loose."  
"Relax. I'm well aware of what a Syndicate Enforcer is capable of," replied Sheppard. "While we wait for your source to produce the collar, may I see the subject so I better understand what I will be working with?"  
"Of course," said Nanno. "Right this way."  
Sheppard paused to pick-up a sinister looking black bag that Chiana supposed contained the instruments he required for attaching a control collar to a slave. Both men turned and headed through the door and down the staircase. As soon as they were out of sight, the Nebari woman silently dropped to the floor of the office and cat footed over to the opened doorway. She arrived just in time to observe the pair turn a corner and continue descending the next flight of stairs.  
"He's a Sebacean male," she heard the tall one say.   
"That should be a easy attachment then," replied the other man. "Hynerian's usually present the most trouble with collar attunement." Their voices faded as they moved deeper down in to the staircase. Chiana moved a little way from the door and turned her comm badge back on.  
"Aeryn?" she whispered.  
"Chiana! Report!" came back the ex-Peacekeeper's tense response.  
"I'm closing in to where they're holding him. Two of the men we watched come in just headed down a staircase under the warehouse," she whispered. "I'm going to follow them down and I'll get back to you when I have an exact location."  
"Pip! Wait for us to..." started Crichton over Aeryn's comm just as Chiana closed the comm link and shut the device off so it wouldn't give her away. She reached behind her and drew her pulse pistol. Unlike the PK issue ones that the rest carried, this one was a civilian model. Thinner and sleeker then the military guns, it didn't have the same ammo capacity but was easier to conceal on her smaller frame. She clutched the silver pulse weapon in both hands and peeked around the door jam to make sure no one was on their way back up the staircase. Seeing no one, she thrust her pistol out before and silently started padding down the steps.  
"Hang on, Berret. I'm coming," she muttered barely above a whisper.  
  
"Damn that kid!" cursed Crichton as he heard the comm link close. "Now what do we do? She didn't even wait to tell us where the hell the staircase was located inside the warehouse."  
Aeryn frowned as she pinned her badge back onto her shirt. "Well, we can assume that the first floor is now empty so we could began making our entrance and then wait for her to give us a more detailed location once we're inside."  
"I agree," rumbled D'argo. "We should not waste the time now that we know its safe to proceed that far."  
"We don't know that for sure!" exclaimed Rygel. "That silly tramp didn't say for positive that the first floor was clear. There could be a hundred of them in there waiting for us."  
"Then we shall deal with them," said the Luxan.  
"You mean, 'you'll deal with them.' I'm not going anywhere near there," replied the Hynerian Dominar.  
"Wrong again, Bucko," said John. "We need you to pick the lock for us. So that means... you go."  
Rygel started to back his thronesled away from the human. To his relieve Malika spoke up.  
"We don't need him," she said. "I can pick the lock... much faster and a whole lot quieter then Toadface."  
Crichton and Aeryn looked at her in surprise. "Are you sure about that?" John then asked.  
"Believe her. Take my word, she can do it," Andar put in from his turn at sentry position watching the warehouse before the Delvian girl could respond. Zhaan lifted an eyebrow in question to her protégé.  
"I've had a very interesting life," Malika told her with a slight shrug of a shoulder.   
"Very well," Aeryn broke in. "Rygel... you stay here then and guard our escape route. The rest of us will go inside and retrieve Chiana and Berret. Do you have the tools you'll need?" she asked Malika.  
The Delvian woman held up a small pouch of tools she'd removed from a leather bag on her belt.  
"All set. Let's go and get this the frell over with so we can go home," she said.  
  
Danner didn't like the way the Shrike looked, not in the slightest. He still looked unhealthy but now he regarded Danner with a look of dispassionate detachment. It was eerie the way the man just quietly watched him. They both had been silently staring at each other from across the length of the cell for the pass few microns waiting for Nanno and Sheppard to join them. The assassin's eyes never blinked as far as Danner could tell, and he seemed almost not to be breathing at all he was so stone still. None to soon, Danner heard the other two men approaching and sighed outwardly in relieve when they came inside the cell.  
"There he is," Nanno told the collar-tech.  
"He doesn't look well," commented Sheppard. "You'll have to take better care of him once the collar is attached if you want him to last very long." He moved closer to the prisoner held to the wall. "You say he had scars on his neck that might have been from a pervious collar?"   
Nanno nodded an affirmative.  
"Can you remove the slave collar so I can get a look at them? There might be established pathways I can use to make the procedure go much easier."  
"Yes," answered Nanno as he removed the control from his belt. He pushed a few buttons and the collar's hold on the cell wall released. Berret was able to move his head slightly forward now that it was free. Nanno pushed another button and there was an audible click as the collar itself unlocked. Sheppard stepped forward and removed the device from around the Shrike's neck so he could view the scars there.  
"Yes. Yes," he said over his shoulder. "We might be able to use these point here. They're..." he cut off his sentence as he turned back and noticed something strange. Berret had begun to smile... wickedly.  
  
Chiana had been able to move into a position where she could see what was going on inside the metal room. The outside of the place had been hastily constructed judging by the rough and sloppy wields. There was a bank of machinery attached to the outside of one wall that hummed with power and she wondered what it could have been for. Through the open door she could see the two men had joined the heavyset third. When they finally moved aside she could see for the first time who she had been searching for.  
"Berret!" she murmured, hidden in the shadows from the men inside the room. The Shrike looked awful. His face was drawn and haggard but his eyes showed no emotion. He seemed even more dispassionate then usual. If she hadn't reached Lassar before he could get them a collar, she would have sworn by the man's appearance it was already too late. The trio spoke for a few microts and then the man with the black bag set it down and walked over to Berret while the tall one played with a device he'd taken from his belt. A couple of microts later the collar-tech reached up and removed the slave collar from Berret's neck. Chiana found herself becoming angry as the man examined his throat.  
"Frelling bastard," the Nebari cursed in building fury as she lifted her pistol ready to charge in and kill them all. Before she could, the man in front of the ex-assassin turned to say something to the other two behind him. The look on Berret's face froze her in place - he was smiling.   
The eerie grin raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.  
The man before him sensed too late that something was wrong, turning back to see the look on the Shrike's features just as Berret lowered both arms. He seized Sheppard by the hair on the back of his head with one hand and yanked it backwards sharply. Berret tore the slaver collar away from the shocked man with his other hand and as Sheppard inhaled to scream for help... the ex-Enforcer drove the metal collar into his open mouth with such force that Chiana heard the collar-tech's neck crack from her position outside the makeshift cell.  
  
Danner step forward to assist Sheppard a microt before he actually thought about what he was doing. He realized his mistake a split microt later as Berret dropped the collar-tech's body and lunged at him. The shorter man started to backpedal away from the semi-lose Shrike but was too late to totally avoid the blow. Berret's stiffen hand chopped downward catching Danner on the collarbone, the hard edge shattering the bones there and driving the man to the floor with a painful yelp. Chiana watched it all take place in the blink of an eye from her hiding place. The tall man scrambled back away from the snarling Shrike, the only thing holding Berret in place was the pair of bonds still attached around his ankles. Danner groaned out in pain while Nanno cursed loudly and brandished his control device in Berret's direction. He savagely stabbed at a series of buttons and the machinery on the outside wall hummed into life. Inside the cell, the ex-assassin howled in pain and rage as arcs of electricity jumped from the cell wall to his thrashing body.  
Chiana understood instantly then what the piece of equipment mounted on the wall was for. She flicked the safety off her pulse pistol and aimed at the device without a microt's hesitation. The gun bucked slightly in her hands and she was rewarded with the sight of the apparatus bursting apart as the bolt struck it. Inside the cell the bolts of energy stopped electrifying Berret but the manacles on his lower legs still held him fast to the cell wall. Chiana cursed silently as she realized they must draw their power from a secondary source. Nanno apparently didn't hear her shot with his attention focused on Berret. Seeing the Shrike was no longer being electrocuted, he pounded on the control device in his hand for a few microts trying to get it to work again. He cursed Berret loudly as the Shrike made another futile attempt to grab at his captor before giving up on the handheld apparatus and drawing his own pistol. With an angry roar he leveled it at Berret's face.  
  
Chiana saw the tall man point his weapon at her friend, without thinking she charged the cell doorway.  
"No!" she shouted as she snapped off a pulse bolt that nearly missed the man.  
Nanno, his fear giving speed to his reactions, spun to face Chiana at her cry, the move allowing him to barely escape her wild shot. He brought his own gun up and sent a bolt in the rushing Nebari girl's direction. Chiana's instincts took over and she tucked herself into a forward roll in mid air, the pulse bolt passing through the space her head had just occupied a fraction of a microt before. As her feet passed over her head, she straightened out as she came out of the roll, thrusting her legs forward and allowing her boots to impact the man high in the chest. The combination of her speed and weight drove Nanno backward and they both crashed to the ground. As she hit the floor, she kicked hard downward with both legs, pinning the man's shoulders with her feet to the cell wall they had slid up against. Nanno snarled at her and attempted to bring his pistol around their tangle of limbs to aim at the woman's head, it became a race to see who would kill the other first. With a shrill war cry, Chiana thrust her pulse gun between her thighs and fired several times point blank into Nanno's face.  
The man stopped moving and when the Chakan smoke cleared, the tall man didn't have much in the way of a head left. Chiana sighed in relief and then rolled off the body. Quickly she checked to see that the shorter one had passed out from his injury as she got to her feet, of course the collar-tech was clearly dead. His head laying at an awkward angle and his jaw obviously shattered from Berret ramming the slaver collar down it. Berret himself was silently regarding her with dead hateful eyes.  
  
Berret's attitude confused her until she realized that she still had Crichton's shirt wrapped around her face hiding her identity. She reached up and ripped the material off her head so he could see that it was her.  
"Are you all right, Retty?" she asked.  
Berret now cocked his head and regarded her curiously. Chiana thinking everything was all right and that he now knew who she was, stepped forward to embrace him.  
"I'm so glad to see you," she started and caught the change in his eyes just in time. She was just able to drop and roll backwards out of his reach as he swiped at her with an envenomed hiss. The strike would have been a killing blow to her head had she been one step closer to the half-bound man.  
"What the frell is wrong with you?" Chiana exclaimed in shock as she bounced back to her feet.  
Berret was now regarding her again with expressionless eyes, the savageness leaving them as quickly as it had surfaced.   
"I already killed you," he said a moment later, his voice dry and departed of all emotion. "I serve Arckatius and the Syndicate."  
"Frell!" moaned Chiana in a whisper. "The control collar pathways... they're active again."  
She looked at the man and calmed her voice. "Listen to me. You're not a Syndicate Enforcer anymore... remember?"  
Berret's stare didn't change. "My purpose is to eradicate the enemy," he recited.   
"I'm not your enemy. It's me, Chiana. You have to remember," pleaded the girl.  
"Chiana...Nebari, female...Status: eradicated by Shrike457," responded Berret as if making a report. "Arckatius is to be obeyed at all costs."  
"You're not Shrike457 anymore. Your name is Berret. You didn't kill me... I'm right here," Chiana said as she began to hear D'argo and the others calling her name from the floor above. The Nebari woman turned her comm badge back on and called the rest of her crewmates.  
"Are you in danger?" demanded D'argo over the comm.  
"No. Everything's pretty much over with down here."   
She then gave them direction on where to find the staircase to the lower level.  
"Is Berret all right?" asked Aeryn next.  
Chiana looked back over at her friend. "Leave - no - witnesses," Berret recited in a graveyard voice while glaring at her with his lifeless eyes.   
"He's here... but something's wrong with him. He's not acting right. Is Zhaan and Malika with you?"  
She could hear John and D'argo swearing in the background as Aeryn answered.  
"They're both here with us. We'll be at your location in just a few microns. Are you safe from him until we can get there?" the ex-Peacekeeper asked with a note of concern in her voice.  
"He's still bound to the cell wall somehow. I'll be okay," Chiana replied.  
"Don't touch anything until we get there. We're on our way," Aeryn said and then closed the comm-link.  
Berret had fallen silent again and merely watched her. Waiting for her to make a mistake and stray within reach.  
"Hurry up, guys," she murmured to herself.  
  
"I can't tell what's wrong with him for sure until we get him back to Moya and I can examine him," said Zhaan a few moments later as she observed the Shrike who was still restrained to the metal wall.  
"That just great," grumbled John. "How are we gonna do that when every time someone gets near him, he tries to take a bite out of them? Are you sure its something to do with those pathways left inside him from the old collar and nothing these guys did to him?"  
"That's the best deduction I could make without my equipment," replied the Delvian.  
"I'm perfectly fine," Berret said suddenly in a calm easy voice. "Why don't you release me?"  
The Luxan narrowed his eyes. "He's lying," said D'argo. "He's trying to draw us in."  
The Shrike's charade faded as he hissed in pent up rage, his eyes turning dark and hateful once again.   
"Well, according to Chubby here," said Andar while trying to ignore Berret for the moment. He gave Danner a shake, making the injured man moan in pain with the movement, "He and his deceased compatriot didn't do anything to Berret other then shock him as punishment."  
Malika stroked her cheek in thought with one forefinger. "That might be enough depending on how strong the charges where. The microbes would have been making demands on his system to help repair damage to his body the electrical current caused and not being fed enough to compensate would weaken him considerably. Those experimental Peacekeeper microbes were not designed to operate in conjunction with a control collar device to begin with and the current passing through the nervous system might have re-energized pathways that should have been dormant." The younger Delvian glanced over at Zhaan to see if she concurred with her assessment. The older Pa'u nodded in agreement.   
"The Syndicate had no idea what they were creating when they mixed the two technologies together," Zhaan concluded. Malika crossed her arms and then looked at Chiana.  
"Its actually a scientific wonder that he was able to function at all while with the Syndicate."  
"Well, I'm glad you find him so fascinating," the Nebari snapped sarcastically and then waved the comment off. She'd known the younger Delvian long enough to know that while she was normally moody and unpredictable as far as Chiana could tell. The woman had a passion for the sciences and when presented with a problem she found interesting, she became so focused she was like a different person. Sometimes Chiana envied the other girl, being flighty and contrary one minute and the next having everyone take her seriously when her area of expertise came up. Even Zhaan would seek her out and ask her advise when something stumped her... and there wasn't much that could stump Zhaan. Nobody went out of their way to ask Chiana for her advise, except maybe Berret. And right now it looked like the only thing he wanted was to kill them all. It bothered her that he kept insisting that she was already dead and that he'd been the one to kill her. She softened the look in her eyes and apologized to Malika.  
"I'm sorry. Anything you can do to help him, I'll be glad for," she said. Despite Malika's earlier grousing, she surprised Chiana by giving her a small smile of understanding.  
"The big question is how do we get him off the cell wall and back to Moya in the condition he's in?" asked Aeryn.  
"He IS a tad violent at the moment," put in Crichton. Chiana was happy to note that her crewmates were making a serious effort to bring him home despite his dangerous condition when a half cycle earlier they might have elected to leave him behind or kill him outright. She knew deep down the man considered himself still an outsider among the crew, she wished he was in his right mind so he could see the risks they were willing to take on his behalf. She wished he could see that they wouldn't abandon him.  
"What about putting him to sleep?" asked Andar.  
"The microbes are probably so hyperactive now they would counteract any agent we could give him to knock him out," said Zhaan.  
"Maybe we should get Sparky down here and have him talk to Berret. That should put him to sleep... works for me," quipped John.  
"This is serious, Crichton," said Aeryn irately.  
"Sorry, just trying to help by lightening the mood," replied the human.  
From his place in the corner, D'argo growled. "Enough of this!" he said as he strode forwarded toward Berret.  
"Yo Darg! What are you doing?" asked Crichton in alarm.  
"Taking care of this so we can get the frell out of here," the Luxan rumbled.  
Chiana watched opened mouth and unable to voice a protest. She was sure D'argo meant to hurt Berret.  
D'argo walked to just with in Berret's reach. The Shrike watched him come and without warning sprang at the huge warrior. D'argo leaned his upper body back just far enough to avoid Berret striking blow. As the Shrike's fist sailed passed, D'argo's right arm pistoned in a blur as he threw a right cross that landed squarely on Berret's jaw. Without so much as a groan, the ex-assassin folded up and hit the floor unconscious.   
"There," said D'argo as he shook out his right fist. "Problem solved." The Luxan turned to John and then said, "Go turn off the power supply so we can free him and let's get the yotz outta here."  
  
Zhaan walked out of her med-lab with a dire look marring her beautiful blue face.  
Chiana jumped up from the seat she'd occupied for the last two arns at the Delvian's appearance.  
"Well?" she asked hopefully.  
Zhaan gave her a weak smile. "I'm afraid I have some bad news, Chiana dear. His mind is damaged. I'm afraid the stress of his treatment for whatever reason has caused him to break with this reality."  
Chiana tilted her head to one side. "H-How can that be?" she asked. "Can't you fix him?"  
The Delvian shook her head. "It's not as simple as that. The mind is sometimes a fragile thing. Something happened that caused it to snap. Something he finds he's unable to deal with or refuses to deal with."  
"Can't you do that Unity thing and bring him back?" the girl pleaded. Zhaan grasped both of Chiana's hands in hers, trying to comfort the distraught younger woman.  
"He has to want to come back... and I feel he doesn't want too. For all intensive purposes I'm afraid the person we lost on the planet is gone," Zhaan explained to her. "Even if we could bring him back now you would be forcing him to live whatever nightmare he's living in his mind, here in our reality. None of us would be real to him."  
"So that's it? We just give up?" Chiana said in disbelieve. "There nothing we can do or try at all to help him? He's lost to us... to me... forever?" Tears started to streak the girl's gray cheeks and she wiped them away in frustration.  
"There's nothing we can be sure that would work. No," Zhaan said in a quiet voice. Chiana caught the slight hesitation in Zhaan's tone and pounced on it as if it where a life raft and she were drowning.  
"What is it, Zhaan? What is it you're not telling me that you think has a small chance of working?"  
"I really don't think it's a viable option, Chiana. As it has little likelihood of success so I don't want to get your hopes up," Zhaan started to say.  
"Tell me! Any chance... no matter how small... is better then no chance at all," Chiana persisted.  
Zhaan drew in a heavy breath and sat down. Bidding Chiana to sit besides her she continued once the young Nebari woman was seated.  
"There is a ancient Delvian healing method that is suppose to restore a being's mental balance."  
"That's good," said Chiana brightening slightly at the ray of hope. "Let's try it."  
Zhaan held up one hand to stop her from going on. "Let me finish, dear. The only problem is it's something usually only attempted by the rare twelfth level Pa'u. I am only a tenth level Priestess. It requires much more mental control then I feel I possess. I have only read about it in the ancient scripts and if I were to attempt it I would need Malika's help and she has just started her studies."  
Chiana nodded in understanding. "So what's the worse that could happen? It doesn't work?" she asked.  
Zhaan looked Chiana straight in the eye, becoming deadly serious. "Despite the risk to ourselves, if Malika and I make a mistake or fail in anyway... we could destroy his mind totally and forever, or worse yet... we could kill him outright." She paused for as few microts to let her words sink into the Nebari woman's mind.  
"At least the way he is now, he's still technically alive," Zhaan finally added. 


	6. Chapter 5

Chiana stood up and paced Moya's deck for a micron before turning back to the Pa'u.  
"That's no way to live, Zhaan. I don't think 'Ret would want it," she said in a quiet voice.  
Zhaan remained silent but nodded her baldhead in agreement with the younger woman.  
"So you and Malika refuse to try this healing technique on Berret?" she asked, gearing herself up to argue the point with the Delvian woman. To Chiana's surprise, Zhaan shook her head.  
"I didn't say that. I said we didn't believe it had much chance of success. Malika has already agreed to help should I decide to attempt it."  
"I thought you said she doesn't have the training needed for that yet?" asked the Nebari.  
"She doesn't. In this case she only needs to lend me her strength while I go into a form of Unity with Berret. The training would help prepare her for the drain on her mental resources but in this case we wouldn't have time to prepare her for the experience. The question is... do we have the right to make that decision to attempt it for Berret?"  
"How do we decide that?" asked Chiana.  
Zhaan looked away from the girl, for some reason not being able to look her in the eye while she told her what came next. "I talked it over with the others. Crichton says that humans have a tradition when one of them is too sick or injured to make their own choices about medical treatment; a family member or close personal friend usually makes the decision for them. We all mostly agreed that Berret would want you to make that choice for him as you are the closest member of the crew to him."   
Chiana could tell that Zhaan felt rather guilty about laying the burden on her shoulders, she could also tell something else bothered her.  
"You said 'mostly' everyone agreed that I should be the one to decide. Who held out?" she asked.   
Zhaan looked at her a microt too long before answering.  
"It was you," Chiana said a moment later, now sure of it.   
"Yes," Zhaan admitted. "Not because I disagree that Berret would want you to be the one who decided for him. I just want to be sure you'd choose what's best for him and not what you think would be best for you."   
Chiana wrung her hands together, when did life become so complicated she thought to herself.  
"I don't know, Zhaan. I'm not sure where one begins and the other ends anymore," she finally confessed.  
Zhaan relaxed visibly. "The fact that you doubt yourself at all, tells me you'll do what's right for him in the end," the Delvian told her. "You have a few arns to make a final decision. It will take that long for Malika and I to prepare. We are willing to abide by whatever you think is the best course of action."  
Zhaan looked pensive for a microt and then continued, "There's something else you should know. Even with a twelfth level priest, this technique is not a total restoration of the being it is performed on."  
"What do you mean?" asked Chiana in concern.  
"The technique requires segregating the section of his mind that is traumatized and blocking or walling it off from the rest. If it works, most of his recent memories will be lost as a result."  
"How much of his recent memory are we talking?" the Nebari woman asked, feeling her heart sink.  
"It's not an exact science under the best of conditions," said Zhaan. "The best we will be able to hope for if this works is that he will only lose somewhere between one quarter to one half of the last cycle. Maybe more considering Malika and I have never done something like this before."  
"A quarter cycle or more gone? He won't remember two solar days ago," asked Chiana. "He won't... remember us?"  
Zhaan shook her head knowing that she was referring to the fact that they had finally become lover's on the planet's surface, she felt the Nebari girl's sadness and shared her sense of loss.   
"I'm afraid not. To him it will never have happened," Zhaan told her honestly. "Chiana, I know you've worked hard to help him regain the parts of himself that he'd lost and you did it despite everyone telling you, you were too immature to take on such a responsibility. You should be proud of what you achieved and there is no reason you can't do it over again if you had to. You both care deeply for each other and as long as you have that, anything is possible. He might be missing some time but you can rebuild the few days you've lost. If this works at least he will be here to try again. It'll just take a little more time is all."  
Chiana sniffled back a tear. "I know, Zhaan. It's just so hard to think about it. I thought I'd finally won and all that stuff Shenna told me was coming true. I thought I'd finally reached through that wall around his heart... and I thought I had problems trusting or loving people," she half joked with a sad tiny chuckle.  
Zhaan patted her shoulder in comfort. "We've all undergone serious changes in the last few cycles, mostly for the better as far as I can see. Even Rygel," she added to get the girl to smile slightly.  
"Yeah... even Frog-face," Chiana agreed quietly with a tight smile of her own.  
"Be strong, you will be able to find him again," Zhaan reassured her.  
Chiana thanked the woman as the Delvian got up to leave the Nebari to her thoughts and the judgment she had to make.  
"You may go in to see him if you wish. He's being kept unconscious but you can go sit with him while you think your decision over. I'll see that you're not disturbed and comm you when its time."  
  
Chiana sat beside the med-bed and gazed at the man who lay there. If it hadn't been for the restraints she could almost believe Berret was merely sleeping. The peaceful look on his face belaying the soulless stare she'd last seen there. She took one of his hands in hers, having removed her gloves so she could feel the warmth of his skin against hers.  
"Well, here we are," she said out loud, unable to bear the almost silence of the room. She searched Berret's face for a reaction to her voice, but as she had thought, his slumber was too deep to elicit a response.  
"Here's another mess you've gotten us into," she continued in a small jest. She had heard somewhere that humor was suppose to be the best medicine. She couldn't recall where she had heard it before. It was probably one of Crichton's dumb sayings she concluded. "I don't think Brunt's going to be getting his rematch anytime soon," she told the sleeping man idly. "This looks like it's going to be a hard one but we'll get through it, you'll see," she promised. "You and me together... partners in crime."  
Chiana bit her lower lip and then lowered her head to rub her cheek against the back of his hand.  
"I wanted to tell you that night," she said after a few microts, "how much you've come to mean to me. And I just wanted you to know... that I knew what it was you were going to tell me. You didn't have to say anything to me because I could see it in your eyes... feel it in your touch... hear it in your heartbeat. I just wish I could have heard you say it anyway."   
She looked up into his face, a single tear burned a hot trail down her cheek as she reached up and stroked the side of his face.  
"I've waited my whole life to feel this way about someone and now it looks like either way I'm going to lose it again. Shenna said I would teach you how to love. He promised we'd be together in the end and you would love me as much as I realized I loved you."   
She gave an almost humorless chuckle.  
"Who can you trust if not a Shrike Grandmaster, huh?" Chiana looked down as she rubbed his callused hand between hers, feeling the hard knuckles and the coarse edges of his palms. The hardened surfaces that she knew could break bone but that had held her so gently no more then two days ago.  
"I know..." she said as she inhaled deeply, "that you're ashamed of what they made you. That you don't think you deserve to be happy. I try so hard to show you that you're wrong... that we all deserve to be happy. I want to make you understand that you're not alone anymore. We're all here for you and care what happens to you." Chiana paused and licked her lips as she tried to put her thoughts in order.  
"I wish you were awake to hear this. I'm not going to give up on you, none of us are. Zhaan's going to do her best to bring you back to us. Malika's even willing to take the risk with her. What's that tell you? The girl who couldn't even stand to be in the same room with you when you all first came aboard sticking her neck out... isn't that something? Even D'argo refused to leave you behind."  
She leaned forward and tried to comb a wayward lock of his dark hair back into place.  
"Oh Retty, you've turned my life upside down. Sometimes I wonder, 'Who is this pitiful male whose complicated things so much for me.' Then I realize... I don't know what I'd do if all of a sudden you were gone from my life. The only thing I'm sure of anymore is I don't want to lose you. You're so much like Crichton and at the same time so much not like him, I can see why Aeryn loves John so much."   
She smiled down into his sleeping face.   
"I promise you no matter how long it takes we'll get back to where we were the other night."   
She bent down and pressed her black lips to his in a gentle kiss.  
"You may not remember us being together, but I'll remember for the both of us until we can make new memories together again."  
Chiana spent the remainder of her time alone with Berret holding his hand and stroking his hair until Zhaan called for her decision.  
  
The crew had gathered inside the med-lab as the pair of Delvians prepared themselves for the attempt to save the Shrike. John looked around at his friends and considered how much they had all changed since they'd first been thrown together. Gone were the old ways of each of them fending for themselves and looking out for their own best interest and survival. Replacing the instinct for self-preservation was the grim determination that they would each fight to the end for the others. It was remarkable to him how a group of beings so alien to each other could learn to be so... human. A small smile lit his face as the thought occurred to him, not that he would ever voice the comment out loud and bear the browbeating he knew he would get for inferring his new friends had grown a few human qualities. Chiana stood by with a tense serious look on her young face, to his surprise he saw Aeryn slip a hand into hers and gently squeeze it in support. Not something a hardened Peacekeeper would normally do. Malika stood next to Zhaan as the older Delvian meditated for a few microns. She had just tied her long blue hair back out of her face with a length of cloth and then turned to look nervously at Andar. The Sebacean man caught the look and gave her a reassuring smile. He bent over and whispered something into the Delvian's tiny perfectly shaped ear that caused the woman to get a lopsided smile and lightly chuckle in reaction to whatever he was telling her. Crichton could almost see some of the tension ease from her thin frame. He considered the Sebacean man for a moment. Andar was probably one of the most pleasant persons he'd met in the Territories. He was complicated and easy going at the same time, always reading or building something in his little makeshift lab workshop. He'd had enough conversations with the man to know that he was well-educated and genuinely liked people but at the same time he could come off as the most hardened Peacekeeper if the situation called for it. John at just recently witness that strange transformation when they were dealing with Berret's surviving captor as Andar interrogated the man for answers about what they had done to Berret. No matter how the man tried to lie or downplay his part in their crewmate's abduction from the hotel, the ex-teacher zeroed in on the falsehood and let Danner know in no uncertain terms that Andar knew he was lying. The Sebacean was like a human lie detector, his cool intelligent eyes and expressionless exterior projecting a quiet unnerving sense of menace while he questioned the other man. John could see Danner visibly shrink from Andar's unspoken threats. It left Crichton with a strange feeling when after watching the interrogation the Sebacean turned and smiled at John and suddenly there was the old Andar he'd come to know. It must have been obvious on his face what he was thinking as Andar leaned in close and whispered, "I learned that from teaching three grades of middle school." John almost laughed out loud as he suddenly had a vision of Andar interrogating a group of mischievous school kids over a spitball fight.   
  
Zhaan opened her eyes and looked at Malika. "Are you ready?" she asked her protégé.   
Malika drew in a long deep breath. "As ready as I'll ever be," she said as she moved to Zhaan's side. "Lets go save gloom-boy's eema... again." Zhaan smiled at the girl's bravado, knowing the younger woman was extremely nervous about attempting such a dangerous journey into the Seek with so little training.  
"Just relax and let me guide the joining. Your only task is to add your strength to my efforts to reach Berret and reorder his conscious mind. Do not attempt to act for yourself no matter what you hear or see. I will decide what to reorder and what to suppress," she explained one last time to the girl. "Only one of us can be in control of the Unity and it must be me."  
"I understand, Zhaan," Malika said, glad that Zhaan and not she would be in control of the experience in any event.  
Zhaan nodded. "Let us begin then," she said and then going to the head of the med-bed, she placed both her hands along Berret's temples and closed her eyes. Malika moved into position behind her and place her own hands along Zhaan's head in a copy of what she did to the injured man. Malika closed her eyes and felt herself swept away in a rush.  
  
Zhaan opened her psychic eyes and found herself standing among a group of people in the middle of a wasteland. She wasn't surprised to find herself there as she'd visited the place several times before in her Unity sessions with Berret. However the landscape was somewhat different then those other occasions, this time instead of being relatively dark and the beings nothing more then shadowy figures, the place was lit as brightly as if under a noon day sun. The people around her were cast in the bright light that revealed all their mortal, and now bloodless, death wounds. With the new detail brought to Berret's world of nightmares she considered that the man had planned on remaining there a very long time.  
"Is this what he sees when he dreams?" asked Malika in shock from behind her. Zhaan hear her voice as plain as day and could feel the girl's presence behind her but she didn't bother turning around knowing that the other woman wouldn't be standing there. Malika heard and saw everything Zhaan did, but like a ghost the woman couldn't interact in this part of the dream as Zhaan could. She could only add her will to Zhaan's own.  
"Yes," she replied to the disembodied voice that no matter where she turned to look was always behind her. "This is where his psyche punishes himself with the perceived ghosts of his victims."  
"You mean all these people are real?" asked the voice.  
"I don't know," replied Zhaan with a slight shrug. "They are to Berret and that is all that matters in the end."   
Malika was silent for a moment and Zhaan could sense the girl's attention scanning the mass of people who seemed to totally ignore their presence in their midst.  
"How do we find him?" the voice asked a few microts later. "Will he look like himself here?"  
"He usually appears as himself but that doesn't necessary hold true in the dream realm. He could appear as a child, a different man or woman... or even an animal. It depends on what part of his mind is controlling the dream reality at the moment," explained the older Pa'u.  
"That's lovely. Nothing like making our job easier," commented Malika dryly. "Any ideas on where to even began to look?"  
Zhaan noticed that most of the people in the crowd where facing in a single direction.  
"I think that would be a good direction to start," said Zhaan as she moved off through the mob, feeling Malika's presence being dragged along behind her. The throng didn't utter a single word as Zhaan pushed her way through. Time had a strange way of flowing and Zhaan wasn't exactly sure how long she moved through the crowd. It felt like it could have been microts one instant then microns or arns the next. She finally reached the edge of the mass of beings and discovered Berret. The man looked very much like himself. He was dressed in his cloak and armor while standing with his back to her, looking out over a dark abyss, the dark chasm signifying the edge of his nightmare world.   
Zhaan felt Malika's presence turn back to survey the crowd they'd just traveled through.  
"He can't possibly have killed this many people," the younger Delvian's voice said.  
"Probably not," agreed Zhaan. "I don't believe he truly knows how many the Syndicate forced him to murder. His subconscious simply projects this mass because he feels he needs to face his accusers and be punished. He might also not only include his actual victims but the lives of the families and friends he's disrupted... counting them as victims also."  
"The psyche is a complicated thing, but I didn't know he was this frelled up," comment Malika. Before Zhaan could reprimand her, she felt Malika mentally tap her on the shoulder.   
"Uh-oh, look at who else is here," said the girl's voice.   
Zhaan got the feeling that her attention was being directed to her left. Turning her mental eyes that way she saw Chiana standing just on the edge of the crowd. Unlike the Chiana she'd just left in the real world, this Chiana was even paler then normal. Her skin and lips drained of the bluish-gray tint of life she usually had. The only splash of real color on the Nebari girl was the vicious gash marring her chest. Her clothes were covered with dried Nebari blood.   
"That explains his break with reality and why he keeps insisting Chiana is dead in his semi-lucid ramblings," said Zhaan. "Somehow he's come to believe he's killed her here."  
"Can we just show him she's really alive in the waking world?" asked Malika. Zhaan mentally shook her head at the other woman.   
"The plane our bodies are still on is no longer true to Berret. To him, this is the real world. What he makes for himself here is reality as far as he's concerned."  
The Priestess felt Malika frown. "This psyche reality is starting to give me a headache," she said. "What do we do now?"  
"First we have to get his attention here. Make him acknowledge us as real on this plane before we can began to help him," explained Zhaan as she took a step forward toward Berret. Out of nowhere a young boy, also with a nasty chest wound, appeared and blocked her way to the man.  
"You don't belong here," the boy accused.  
"Let me pass," replied the Delvian. The boy refused to move, staring at her with cold dead eyes.  
"The murderer belongs here with us," the ghost hissed a few microts later.  
"No," said Zhaan. "He belongs back with us who love him."  
"There can be no love for such as us," the boy spat. Malika felt Zhaan's attention perk up at the strange statement. "Who is he?" she asked the older Pa'u.  
"I wasn't sure until he said 'us' instead of 'him' when talking about Berret. I believe this is part of Berret's moral conscious. The part that wants to make atonement for his crimes."  
"Interesting," said Malika. "How the yotz can you be sure of that?"  
"I don't know. Just a feeling," replied Zhaan. She next chanted a small prayer and did her best to fill her soul with the love she felt for all living things. Then picturing the love as a ball of energy sitting in the palm of her hand, she reached forward until her hand and the glowing sphere touched the boy. Almost immediately the child's image faded away.  
"What did you do?" Malika said in alarm. "You didn't kill it, did you?"  
Zhaan smiled at the younger woman's apprehension. "No. I simply pacified it with the love it claims couldn't exist."  
"You sort of put it to sleep then. I'll have to remember that the next time I go running around someone else's mind," quipped the younger woman.  
  
Zhaan moved to Berret's side to see the man staring with vacant eyes at the vast emptiness before him.  
"Berret?" she asked softly, not sure if it be wise to touch the man's whose mind she was in. To her relieve Berret turned to regard her with uninterested eyes.  
"Are you here to blame me for your death also?" he asked after a few microts.  
"I'm here to bring you home," Zhaan responded gently.  
"Home?" repeated the Shrike with a hint of confusion. "I am home," he said, waving his arm to encompass the wasteland that surrounded them. "Are you sure you're not here to blame me for killing you?" he asked again.  
Zhaan shook her head no. Berret turned back to look out over the abyss once again. "I didn't think so. You don't look dead," he told her and then begun to hum a tune she'd heard John croon on occasion. The he cut it off suddenly. "That's what I do, you know," Berret continued as if talking about the weather. "I kill people for the Syndicate and then we all come here to live."  
"He's mega-frelled," Zhaan heard Malika say in her head. The elder Delvian forced herself to ignore the other woman's idle mental chatter and focus on Berret. Malika figuratively shuttered as she realized that Zhaan had picked up the roaming thought she'd just allowed to escape.  
"No, that not true," Zhaan denied. "You never willingly murdered anyone."  
Berret watched her with a lopsided quirky look. "You're new here, aren't you?" he asked.  
"I'm here to take you back," Zhaan told him firmly, sensing his attention was wandering.  
"Back where?"  
"Back home where Chiana is waiting for you," Zhaan said again, playing the Nebari girl like a trump card.  
Berret cocked his head almost like the Nebari girl was wont to do sometimes and then pursed his lips.  
"Chiana's dead," he said as if explaining a fact to a small child. "I killed her."  
Zhaan vigorously shook her head in denial. "Chiana is not dead," she said. She realized an instant later that somehow the Chiana apparition had joined them. The specter tilted her head slightly and gazed wordlessly at the woman with the same interested-not interested look that Berret had. Her lips, now a pale gray in death, parted slightly as if waiting for the answer to a question.  
"Yes, she is. See?" Berret went on to say as he absently waved a hand in the ghost's direction. "I didn't mean to kill her but she refuses to listen to me."   
Berret turned to the silent Nebari and Zhaan was surprised to see a flicker of sadness fill his eyes.   
"She won't forgive me. She'll never forgive me," he muttered.  
Zhaan wasn't sure if the same trick she used on the boy ghost would work on the Chiana image, but she decided to give it a try while Berret's attention was focused on the Nebari's likeness. With the same ball of light in her hands she touched Chiana on the shoulder and like the boy she faded away to nothing.  
Berret regarded the occurrence with only mild interest at best. Acting not surprised in the least by the disappearing Nebari woman.  
"You see? Chiana isn't here," Zhaan insisted. Berret shrugged.  
"It doesn't matter. She'll be back. She always comes back," he said and then turned back to face the chasm, seemly to forget Zhaan was there at all.  
"What do we do now?" asked Malika. Zhaan bit her lip while she thought for a microt.  
"I'd hoped to talk him into cooperating with us but it looks like we're going to have to go in without his help."  
"Go in where?" asked the girl confused.  
"Into Berret's mind," Zhaan answered.  
"I thought we already were in his mind."  
Zhaan mentally sighed. "I mean this Berret's mind," she explained while pointing at the man in front of her. Malika made a mental sound of still not understanding.  
"We are in Berret's mind, but this image of himself is the center of it all. The part that is the being, the person that makes him who he is."  
"I still don't get it?" apologized the other Delvian.  
"Just think of everything we see here as a land... or a kingdom. And he, is the king," tried Zhaan.  
"Oh!" exclaimed Malika in understanding. "What's that thing Crichton always says? He's like the man behind the curtain who runs the show," she said as she remembered.  
"Exactly," answered the older Delvian. "In there is where we'll have to reorder his mind to set things right again."  
"Okay, so how do we get in?" asked the voice.  
"That's the easy part. Getting the work done and getting out again is going to be the trick. Are you ready?" Zhaan asked.  
"No. But don't let that stop you," replied Malika.  
"All right. Relax and do only what I tell you to do."  
"Okay."  
Zhaan closed her eyes and cleared her thoughts. She started to chant and Malika felt herself almost become solid in the dream world. Suddenly Zhaan ceased praying.  
"Take one step forward," she ordered.  
Malika simply thought of taking the step and she felt the disembodied presence she had become move forward and occupy the same space that Zhaan's dream body did. Suddenly she seemed to be locked inside of the older Delvian.  
"Don't panic. Relax," ordered the older woman again. "Things are as they should be. Just let me have control." Malika forced her mind to calm and let the other woman take over her movements.  
Zhaan/Malika stepped closer to the Shrike. "Berret!" they called his name.  
The man turned again to look at them, his eyes still far off and disinterested. Zhaan/Malika reached forward with one blue fingertip to touch the man's forehead. At the contact, a point of light grew until it exploded in a bright spark. In the next instant all three of them were gone. 


	7. Chapter 6

Malika opened her mental eyes, and then closed them right away. She seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Zhaan sensed the younger Delvian's growing panic.  
"Concentrated on seeing with my eyes. You're too young and inexperience in the Seek to find the order in chaos," she told Malika.   
Malika imagined herself inside Zhaan's head and using her eyes instead of her own. Immediately the place they had entered took on a sense of order her mind could comprehend. She suddenly found herself in a body again standing beside Zhaan. They were in a dark place surrounded by small spheres of different color lights. The globes traveled around seemingly at random, giving the place the effect of one of those loud taverns Crichton and the rest like to frequent except without the loud music or annoying drunken patrons.  
"What is this place?" she asked. "I think I liked the last one better, at least you could see."  
"This is where Berret's memories reside. For our purposes I simplified their appearance to make them easier to work with," Zhaan apologized. "Our task will be difficult enough without needless details to distract us."  
"These little balls of light are his memories?" asked Malika.  
"Yes," answered Zhaan. "Each one contains a memory. The memory could be as short as a nano-microt or as long as an entire cycle. There are no rules here as to the time they can cover. We have to locate one that is a recent memory. Once we do that we can follow the chain of events leading up to his separation with reality.  
"What do you mean by a chain? There's just these glowing spheres all over," Malika said.  
"It seems they are traveling around randomly put each event is connected to the one that proceeds it and the one that followed it. Once we capture the one that we want the others will be drawn to it," explained the older woman. "We than just determine which direction to go and follow the links until we get close to the bad memories. Once we feel we are close enough, we can sever the link and wall the remaining parts of the chain away. In theory, Berret should then awaken with his memory up until then intact and he will never have experienced the trauma that broke his mind."  
"Almost sounds simple enough," commented Malika. "But why don't we just follow the links down to the instant his mind snapped and cut them off there?"  
"That's where the danger lays for us. We are inside Berret's mind, thus if we get too close to what drove him mad... it could do the same to us," answered Zhaan. "And there will be no one who could try to bring us back. "  
"I'm glad you finally decided to share that little tidbit with me," snapped the younger Delvian.  
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to cause you undue stress on the journey to get here," apologized Zhaan. "In truth, I didn't believe it would be possible for us to get this far. If you now decide to leave this joined Unity, the others and I will understand. This is dangerous even for a Pa'u with more training than I. No one will fault you for not going where you don't have the training or skill to be yet."  
Malika saw that Zhaan sincerely meant the offer for her to withdraw from the Unity. She also saw the grim determination lying underneath the older Delvians calm veneer.  
"Even if I chose to leave the Unity, you're still going to stay here and try... aren't you?" Malika asked.  
Zhaan nodded. "I have to try and bring him back. I can't leave him like this if there's a chance I could help."  
"I'm not leaving you here alone. We've come this far," said Malika. "Just show me what we have to do."  
Zhaan sighed in relief, which didn't improve Malika's confidence that the older Delvian was still worried.  
"Watch and I will show you what to do, but you must do exactly what I show you and nothing more," she explained. Zhaan reached out toward a sphere pulsing with blue light.  
"You must 'read' the memory like this. Hold out your hand and the memory will stop moving as your hand enters its aurora. You have to be sure that you reach only far enough to stop it. If your hand enters the sphere you will disrupt the memory and possibly damage Berret further. If it's a particularly violent memory you may receive physic feedback that might harm you instead. So you reach only far enough to sense what the memory is about." As she demonstrated, it appeared to Malika that she was cupping her hands around the sphere, which seemed to float between her palms. "If you find one that centers around Berret's time on Moya let me know and we will carefully move down the chain from there until we've gone as far as we believe we can safely." Zhaan smiled lightly as she read the sphere of light.  
"This one is a memory of a holiday from his past life on his homeworld," Zhaan told her.  
"Why don't we fix those too while we're here?" asked Malika.  
Zhaan shook her head and released the orb. "We can't alter his past if we want him to return to us as he was. Imagine yourself suddenly awakening from a dream to find you're now taken from what you just remembered and thrust into a strange place full of alien beings. They have to stay buried and be recovered one at a time normally for him to make the adjustment. The shock would be too great for him and he needs the knowledge and memories he's developed while here in the Territories to help him survive."  
  
Malika nodded. "So I guess we should get started on tracking a Moya memory down," she said and reached for a sphere just as Zhaan had showed her. Zhaan tried several and found them nowhere close to his time with them. She reached for a bright green one and then suddenly drew her hand back in a hiss of pain. Frowning she waited until another globe the same shade of green passed by her and she reached forward again. As her hand neared it she suddenly found herself inside Berret's body.   
They were running through what appeared to be a junkyard for space going craft. In front of them was a humanoid being who was fleeing for his life. She felt Berret's muscles surge and in one powerful leap he had overtaken the being and slammed him viciously to the ground. The humanoid turned over and held up his hands defensively, pleading for his life. She snarled with Berret as the twin blades sprang from their gauntlet and sliced into the man. As the victim screamed, Zhaan cried out and pushed the burning light away from her, ending the vision.  
"Malika!" Zhaan called out shakily. "Stay away from the bright green spheres," she ordered.   
The younger Delvian turned to look at her in puzzlement.  
"They are of death," Zhaan said in distress. Malika nodded in understanding and turned away to allow Zhaan a moment to compose herself in private.  
  
A few microts later Zhaan returned to searching. Both Delvians careful now to avoid touching the bright green orbs of light, which Zhaan found there were far too many of. Malika reached out and caught a purple one. As her hand neared it she caught a glimpse of Berret inside a cell... one of Moya's cells.  
"Zhaan! I think I found one," the girl exclaimed, backing her hand away just far enough to cut the vision but keep the sphere from flying away from her. Zhaan rushed to her side and placed a hand near the globe just above the other woman's. The memory came to her. Berret in his cell looking out at Chiana as she promised to bring him something to eat after they starbursted away from the planet she'd found him on.  
"You did it, Malika. You found our first link," the Pa'u said with a smile.  
Malika smiled in returned and then squeaked in surprise as the memory showed Berret regarding her in her cell. It was obvious by the look on her face in the memory that she didn't like been imprisoned so close to the Shrike. If someone had been staring at her the way she was at Berret then she most likely would have gone over and closed their eyes for them. She was amazed to find Berret didn't take offense at all.  
"He-He thinks... I'm pretty," Malika repeated as she heard what the man had been thinking. She than lightly laughed as his next thought came to her. "But he finds my green eyes... disturbing."  
"Stop eavesdropping," said Zhaan, "and keep looking."  
Malika picked her head up and saw several spheres start to drift purposely toward them.  
"There are the next links in the chain. Now we must be extremely careful," Zhaan warned.  
  
The pair waited patiently for the spheres to float toward them. Zhaan reached out and snared another, this one dark blue. She saw Berret and D'argo facing off in her lab when she was running her test on the man.  
"This one here is the next," she said to Malika. The younger Delvian set free the sphere she held and waited for the next batch to drift in. Slowly they progressed down the line of Berret's memories. At one point Malika caught a brilliant red one and then shuttered.  
"Yuck!" exclaimed the girl.  
"What's wrong?" asked Zhaan in alarm. Worried she'd found a new type of violent memory.  
Malika made a face. "That one was of Chiana kissing him." She smacked her lips together as if tasting something unpleasant. "Talk about disturbing."  
Zhaan released a pent up breath she didn't realize she was holding and then idly thought why should she be holding her breath when this wasn't really her body. She tossed the thought away and then said,  
"If you're finished fooling around, can we get back to work?"  
"Sure," said Malika, not the least bit put off by Zhaan's tone. "Just thought I'd warn you."  
They trace a few more, carefully skipping over the bright green globes, it seemed that there were more and more of them being attracted with each link of the chain they discovered. Zhaan considered that her work trying to help Berret recover his past might have had something to do with the increased number of violent memories connected to certain parts of this end of the chain. A yellow ball of light caught her attention and Zhaan held out her hand to it. As the sphere's influence touched her, she had the mental of Berret in a half destroyed Transport Pod standing over Rygel. The blades from his gauntlet poised almost touching the Hynerian's temple. Chiana with a pulse rifle aimed at him in the background pleading with the Shrike to come to his senses. The Delvian woman understood that she was witnessing the events from their time trapped on the ice moon. She looked about and saw that the green and now the yellow spheres out-numbered the safer colored ones.  
"Malika, do not touch anymore of the memory spheres," Zhaan instructed.  
The younger woman looked around. "Are we done?" she asked.  
"It is too dangerous for us to read them any further. I'll have to decide where to break the chain from this point on."  
Zhaan looked around and spied a cluster of safer colored orbs amidst a flock of red, yellow, and a few green ones.  
"There," she said pointing at them. "We will end it there."  
The pair moved over to the location of the spheres. "Which one?" asked Malika.  
Zhaan debated the question for a microt. The red ones seem to have mostly to do with Chiana so she didn't want to sacrifice one of them. The green and yellow spheres where too dangerous to work with so they were out of the question. Finally deciding she chose an orange one.  
"This one," she said pointing out the globe to Malika.  
"Do you know what it is?" asked the girl.  
"It could be anything. Part of a text he's read, a chore he'd done... or maybe a friendship he'd developed. We may never know. If we are to save him this memory must be sacrificed."   
"Okay. So what do we do now?"  
"This is probably the most dangerous part. Cutting the link in the chain and blocking off the memories that are destroying him," Zhaan told her. "Move to the opposite side of the sphere from where I stand."  
Malika did as Zhaan instructed and stood facing her with the orange ball of light between them.  
"We must tear this memory down and rebuilt it in such a way as that it walls off the rest of the chain from the memories we want him to keep. Only I can reconstructed the sphere... you must only supply me with your strength while I do the work. Do not attempt to read the memory or you might be lost with it as it is reshaped." Malika nodded in understanding.  
"Good. Let us begin," Zhaan said and then uttered a quick pray to the Goddess to help guide them. She held up both hands in front of the globe and Malika copied her. Caught between the two Delvian women the sphere began to pulse brightly. Malika expected Zhaan to chant a prayer while she worked but instead she remained silent. She realized that she felt Zhaan drawing strength from her and then suddenly the sphere flared into a dazzling white light. Malika flinched as it seemed the light should have been eradiating enough heat to burn her palms; instead she felt an intense cold on her hands. On the other side of the pulsating luminosity she could see Zhaan's face cast in alternating highlights and shadows. The radiance grew in size as Zhaan pulled more of her life force away from her to reinforce her effort to reshape the energy. Just as she felt she could give no more, Zhaan threw her head back and screamed silently. Malika knew that she also was screaming wordlessly, the brilliance of the sphere now louder then mere sound in their minds. Light surged outward and engulfed them both; the Delvians felt their psychic bodies being rent apart just before then fell into darkness.  
  
Malika's real body slammed into her. She opened her eyes just in time to watch herself fall as her hands left Zhaan's temples. Almost in sync with the younger girl, Zhaan started to slip to the floor also.  
"Whoa! Got ya!" exclaimed Crichton as he and Andar managed to get their arms under the Delvian girl before she could strike the ground. Crichton and the Sebacean man lifted up and carried her limp form over to the nearest spare med-bed. Just behind them came D'argo with Zhaan gathered up in his arms. The Luxan brought her to the next bed and gently laid her down. Malika felt like there wasn't a solid support fiber left in her body. A glance at Zhaan told her that the older woman felt the same way.  
"What happen, Zhaan?" asked Aeryn as she came to the blue woman's bedside.  
"Yeah," put in Chiana. "You weren't in a trance longer then a micron when you both collapsed to the floor." Her gaze moved between the pair of Delvians and the sleeping Berret as if she couldn't decide which of her friends she should be more worried about. "It didn't work, did it?" she asked Zhaan a microt later.  
Malika was stunned to hear that they'd only appeared to be locked in Unity for a single micron.  
"It seemed like arns," she rasped out.  
"Time is perceived differently in certain levels of Unity," Zhaan explained, her own voice dry and hoarse. "I can't be sure if we helped him or not, Chiana," she said to the Nebari woman. "Berret will sleep for a solar day or two if it has worked."  
"What happens if it didn't work?" Chiana asked.  
"In that case, he may never wake up," the Delvian told her honestly. "Only time will tell."  
  
Berret opened his eyes... and moaned.   
The room, or wherever he was, was a blur. A blue and a gray shape moved in to hover over him.  
"Berret?" asked a female voice.  
He squinted his eyes trying to bring the figures into focus. Somebody pried his eyelids opened further and shined a bright light into his eyes.  
"Oh frell," he groaned and tried to fight them off, but he was too weak. "Stop it!" he begged his tormentor.  
"Berret? Are you okay?" This time he was sure it was Chiana's voice.  
"Pixie?" he asked and the gray shape leaned forward until his eyes brought her into focus.  
"Yeah, it's me," she answered. "How do you feel?"  
Berret ran his tongue along dry lips. "Like Rygel ran me down with his thronesled... several times." He got an odd look on his face and then asked, "Is that what happened?"  
Chiana smiled as in the background he could now make out Zhaan checking his vital signs.  
"No, no. You've been very sick," Chiana told him, staying with the story they all agreed upon to tell him. "Can you tell me what the last thing you remember is?"   
Berret frowned as he tried to recall, everything was still too blurry in his mind. He had the feeling he'd been unconscious and unaware for a very long time. Suddenly something did occur to him and it centered on Chiana.  
"The last thing I remember is that you cut all the toes out of my socks," he said in an accusatory manner.  
Chiana got a tight look around her eyes and she pressed the fingers of one hand to her lips as if to prevent herself from saying something. Chiana remembered the incident; it was a prank she pulled on him a little more then half a cycle ago. The Nebari girl did her best to hide her disappointment that he didn't remember the recent closeness they'd shared.  
"That's right," she said with a brave smile. "You got me cold on that one."   
Berret seemed content that he'd caught her up on her prank and settled back onto his pillow. If he was aware of Zhaan and Malika's close interest, he didn't show it.  
"So what happened to me and why do I feel so bad?" he asked.  
"You came down with a bug of some sort," Zhaan stalled. "After you've gotten some rest we can fill you in on the specifics. Right now you are in no more danger, so rest assured."   
After Zhaan and Malika had rested from their experience, the Pa'u had gathered the rest of the crew and instructed them they were to avoid discussing the missing time in Berret's memory. That she would have to explain to the Shrike in a slow and careful way. She was sure the knowledge of more lost memory would distress the man and undo what good she'd been able to do for him in recovering his identity.  
"Zhaan's right, 'Ret. Get some rest and I'll be back in to visit you later," put in Chiana.  
Berret was too tied to argue with the women and he felt his eyelids growing heavy again.  
"All right," he said and as Chiana moved slightly to adjust his blanket he caught her scent. That in itself shouldn't have been anything unusual, but this time it stirred something deep inside of him. Sleep beckoned and he pushed the thought to the back of his mind to look over at a later time when he felt better.  
As his eyes started to close, Chiana lightly brushed his cheek. Dozily, he caught the hand and lightly kissed the back of it before rubbing it against the side of his face. In the next instant he was asleep. Surprised, Chiana felt a tear escape and began to roll down her cheek. Zhaan was next to her before she realized the woman had moved. Chiana looked up at her and then Zhaan lovely drew the teary-eyed girl into her embrace.  
"You see," the Delvian told her in a hushed tone as she stroked her head of wild white hair. "Somewhere inside he remembers. Have patience and you will find that part of him again." 


End file.
